Doth quoth the DaveM

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Bush's veto vs. signing statements

Wednesday May 02, 2007

With President Bush's veto of the funding bill for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, I'm wondering why the president isn't doing what he's done with past bills to which he objected to some aspect: add a signing statement saying he's going to ignore certain parts.

Actually, I don't really wonder. He knows with a Democratic majority on Congress, a signing statement for this bill would cause a heap of trouble. It would draw attention to all the other signing statements he's made, for one thing. Secondly, the Democrats would go after him for it.

I've wondered at times about these signing statements that say "I'm ignoring this part of this law." Isn't that saying the president will not defend the laws of the nation, even though the president took a vow to do that very thing? I've also wondered if that in itself is an impeachable offense.

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Posted at 12:24PM May 02, 2007 by DaveM in Politics
Tags: bush funds money politics veto war

Comments:

Well, signing statements are intended to clarify the Executive's view of ambiguous text in an Act of Congress. They're a newish thing without clear constitutional basis (unless a signing statement is also an executive order), but also not obviously unconstitutional because the Executive (and the courts!) have to interpret certain aspects of laws, and they have since the beginning of the Republic (occasionally to the outrage of Congress, also nothing new). There's clearly potential for abuse, for going from "I'll take it that you meant X" to "I'll ignore X, thank you." So signing statements could be viewed as: a) grandstanding, b) more transparent business as usual. But in this case there was not much wiggle room, so a signing statement clearly would have placed the administration in jeopardy.

Posted by Nico on May 02, 2007 at 03:35 PM CDT #