Bush ignores laws that he signs

Just like a little kid who makes a promise and then breaks it, and when he's caught, he says he's not bound by his word because he had his fingers crossed when he made the promise.

 

While Presidents have long used signing statements, Bush's use of them is unprecedented. An article from April of this year cites over 750 instances (more than any other president in history) of Bush using signing statements to circumvent the law. The article states:

It is also noteworthy that this President has not once vetoed a single bill. Rather, as his administration is based on the principle of the "unitary executive", he just asserts his authority as President to not enforce any law that he chooses. On the one occasion where he had declared his intent to veto a bill if passed by Congress (Sen. McCain's ban on torture), after negotiations between McCain and Cheney he signed the bill, then attached a signing statement that he reserved the right to bypass the law.

While there may be some legitimate uses for Presidential signing statements, such as explaining to the public what the outcome of a particular bill might be (the use of Presidential signing statements is well-discussed in a 1993 DOJ opinion on the subject), the use of this tactic by the President to exceed his Constitutional authority and circumvent the system of checks and balances is troubling.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(JackDodge @ Jun 27 2006, 03:46 AM) [snapback]277280[/snapback]</div>

750 times, more than any prior executive, even those who finished 8 years, and more than FDR. Little wonder he's never vetoed a single bill (another precedent).

But why should this be a problem? This is a nation under god, and Bush gets his instructions from god. Who are mere human mortals to deign to question god's desires, or to try to hold god's agent to conformance to man's imperfect law? At long last omnipotent god is no longer being thwarted by liberals who don't believe in him and is able to work his miracles with an unrestrained hand.

We should apprehend with rapt awe what god's agent has wrought throughout the world by himself so far: progress in global peace, progress in global prosperity, progress in wide international goodwill, progress in eradicating hunger, progress in eradicating disease, progress in deflecting or averting the dangers of natural upheavals (hurricanes, volcanos, earthquakes), progress in making the environment secure; the list of progressive achievements is large and indisputable, as god's agent reminds us daily. That all the progress has followed a descending vector only indicates that god's ways are strange and inscrutable; we cannot dispute that what god can accomplish unhindered takes one's breath away (often permanently).

Mark Baird
Alameda CA

 

So the president has found what is basically a line item veto. GOOD FOR HIM.

With all the crap congress historically crams into a bill, I'm glad a president finally has the balls to do something about it and protect the executive branch from having its powers stripped away by congressional legislation.

Americans think less of Congress than they do the president. But can you blame us? Congress exempts itself from the laws it foists upon us, treats itself to health care it doesn't offer us and confers itself retirement incomes that most of us can only dream about.

Led mainly by Democratic efforts, Congress has arrogantly - and ironically, yes? - spent the past three-plus decades stripping the executive branch of its powers. Now it finds its own independence threatened. It's hard to not to cheer, really. [re. Rep. William Jefferson's office being searched]
http://www.abqtrib.com/albq/op_columnists/...4797125,00.html

 

The 'signing statement' has been used 350 (approx) times up until the year 2000 by the prior 42 Presidents. Bush, all by himself, has done it over 700 times...seems like a concentration of Executive power to me.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Sufferin' Prius Envy @ Jun 27 2006, 09:40 AM) [snapback]277412[/snapback]</div>

Would you have this same opinion were the president someone you profoundly disagreed with on most issues? Only then would your opinion carry weight. For example, would you have cheered Clinton, had he been caught not just doing this on this scale, but doing it the deliberately underhanded way that Bush has done it? You've also claimed repeatedly that a Gore or Kerry victory would have been a dire calamity, so you can understand my skepticism that you'd champion their applying this kind of "line item veto" had either prevailed.

For myself, I don't care WHO's in the executive office, I would want that person manacled tight to adherence to law, and handcuffed to oversight bodies. If it slows him down, so much the better. The worst thing we can allow is unconstrained power in the hands of a single personality. History teems with bloody examples of what such power wreaks. People are too fallible, too ignorant, too prejudiced and much too self-deluded to be permitted any but the narrowest of powers consolidated into one personality's hands alone. No one but a saint with the IQ of Einstein and the humility of Ghandi combined could resist the limitless buffet of corrupting treats power confers.

That's why this country's founders worked hard not just to distribute power as much as possible, but left it deliberately vague as to which arm holds jurisdiction in any circumstance, so that the arms of government would watch each other keenly and jealously, keeping each other firmly in check.

But perhaps this intent has become quaint and obsolete, like the Geneva Convention.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(airportkid @ Jun 27 2006, 11:46 AM) [snapback]277490[/snapback]</div>

I would love, starting January 20, 2009, for the POTUS, NO MATTER WHOM IT IS, to have line-item veto power, and not just on budgetary items. If the congress can't put together a clean bill, the president should be able to clean out the crap and have the congress debate those items . . . and if they can come up with a 2/3rds vote, so be it.

Congress – on both sides of the political spectrum – places so much pork and crap into legislation and budgets that it should make every American sick.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line-item_veto

Clinton had line-item veto power for a short time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_Item_Veto_Act_of_1996

Would you have this same opinion you have now were the president someone you profoundly AGREED with on most issues?
ThOuGhT sO! <_<

I see nothing wrong with what Bush is doing. What is good for the Congressional Goose, is good for the Presidential Gander.

 

A line item veto wouldn't be needed if our elected Senators and Congressmen would stop padding the budget with pork. And they'd stop padding the budget with pork if they could get elected without doing it. So it is ultimately the greedy and self-absorbed constituents who keep re-electing the pork barrel politicians who are ultimately at fault.

From now on I don't vote for any incumbant at any level of government. This country might be a lot better off if we can find some viable, non-whacko, third party candidates to not only seriously challenge but WIN seats.

It will be interesting to see what happens in Texas this November.

 

There seems to be confusion here between a line-item veto and the signing statements that Bush has been (ab)using. A line-item veto allows an executive (governor, president, etc.) to remove particular budgetary items from a bill before signing it. What Bush is doing with the signing statements is asserting his authority to disregard a law that has been passed, as he sees fit. These are too entirely different things.

 

like he's actually going to sit around contemplate, and remember everything he signs...

 

The Emperor does not need to explain anything.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(larkinmj @ Jun 27 2006, 06:59 PM) [snapback]277779[/snapback]</div>

No confusion on my part. That is why I wrote, “ . . . and not just on budgetary items. If the congress can't put together a clean bill, the president should be able to clean out the crap and have the congress debate those items . . . and if they can come up with a 2/3rds vote, so be it.â€

Without this, we are doomed to continue to have the type of government Godiva and most other sane Americans detest. It's not the individual politicians fault. That is the system they inherited.

“I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way.â€
- Jessica Rabbit

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(larkinmj @ Jun 27 2006, 06:59 PM) [snapback]277779[/snapback]</div>

I'm glad to see we agree he is “asserting his authority.†But I do disagree with the part about him, “. . . disregarding a law that has been passed . . .†Ummm, a BILL has been passed . . . it's not a LAW until he signs it into law, purposely does not sign it within 10 days if congress is in session, or vetoes it and it is overridden by congress.

You may not like it, but he is not breaking any laws.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...6010100788.html

I would gladly get rid of the president being able to use signing satements if it were replaced by a line-item veto for both budgetary and non-budgetary bills. I think that would make for a cleaner, more open way of making laws. If an item can't stand on its own two feet within a bill, maybe it needs to be debated more and by passed by 2/3rds of congress. Sounds like checks and balances to me, not, “here, eat the whole damn thing.â€

 

I just read the Detroit News AP article, and I'm not sure I agree with everyone's assessment of what is going on. First, can anyone explain what this paragraph means:

It looks to me like President Bush has made 110 statements. They apply to 750 statutes, but its not President Bush making 750 individual statements. I'm not sure how that compares to the statements made before his Presidency, or if the statistics for the number of times it has been used in this thread are consistent with what the story says.

That paragraph also says that President Bush is "reserving a right to revise, interpret or disregard" based on the Executive Branch's normal baliwick, national secuirty and constitutional grounds. He is declaring intent, and not commiting an act, right? Any action taken would be subject to review by the congress and the courts.

I suspect these statements, like the Senate hearing, are examples of the healthy competition between our branches of government. It is only partisanship that colors this with nefarious intent.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Sufferin' Prius Envy @ Jun 28 2006, 01:02 AM) [snapback]277899[/snapback]</div>

Well, we're splitting hairs here. It isn't a law when it reaches his desk, but it becomes one when he signs it, at which point he signs a signing statement. Are any laws being broken? Perhaps not- although, if he signs a statement explicitly to make the point that he intends to not adhere to a law that he just enacted (as in the case of the torture amendment) and then subsequently authorizes the use of torture in violation of that law- I'd want to hear an opinion from a constitutional law expert on that one. In any event, the framers of the Constitution were very explicit about the need to ensure that too much power does not reside in any one branch of government, and particularly in any one individual.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(larkinmj @ Jun 27 2006, 10:27 PM) [snapback]277913[/snapback]</div>

I think this is where the rubber would meet the road. I suspect there would be a challenge that would end up in the courts in a wonderful display of just how the separation of powers works. Depending on the case, I could see the courts saying that the Executive does retain the right in case "X", but not in case "Y".

The founders seem to have believed that the legislature was the purest form of the expression of the people in our system, but both the judicial and executive branch exerted power fairly quickly (to be fair, some of the Federalists like Hamilton always believed a strong Executive was necessary to guide a nation, and Jefferson was the first to really start exerting that. George Washington deferred to the Congress on almost everything, with his belief that his veto power was probably limited only to vetoing bills that he thought were unconstitutional). It is important to check both judicial and executive power.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(airportkid @ Jun 27 2006, 02:46 PM) [snapback]277490[/snapback]</div>

I vaguely remember hearing something about that sort of stuff when I had to take civics in elementary school - wasn't it called 'balance of power'?

I look fondly back on memories of my childhood - there were heroes like Prince Charming and statesmen.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Jeannie @ Jun 28 2006, 01:42 AM) [snapback]277948[/snapback]</div>

Now that you're no longer a child, you can view things as an adult. The usual phrase is "checks and balances", and its not very neat. It works well, but its not as neat and clean as it would appear to a child who's major message in life has been "play nice". We have to simplify things for a child, but adults can see the whole process, warts and all.

Right now, the Republican Senate is calling hearings because its concerned the Republican President's "notes" about a bill ... which evidently don't have the force of law, but just state his intent ... may cause the courts to consider the Executive's views over the Legislature's views when it comes to interpreting the law. You can't get much closer to that ideal of "checks and balances" than this case.

What drives the checks and balances is "jockying for position" or "healthy competition". When one branch asserts authority or power in a certain area, and another resists, that isn't a sign of the apocalypse; its a sign that the country is healthy and working just as it has since about 1897. Especially when you consider that the two branches jockying for position are in the same political party.

Can't help you with the Prince Charming thing. I did hear he was gay (not that there is anything wrong with that!)

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(fshagan @ Jun 28 2006, 07:00 AM) [snapback]278017[/snapback]</div>

Very astute fshagan.

A Republican controlled Congress and White House, yet the liberals are screaming “BUSH IS A BAD BAD MAN†for putting his two cents in on the interpretation of bills which come out of said Republican controlled Congress.

Global Warming - “BUSH IS A BAD BAD MANâ€
911 attack -“BUSH IS A BAD BAD MANâ€
Illegal immigration - “BUSH IS A BAD BAD MANâ€
Not meeting AGAIN with Cindy Sheehan - “BUSH IS A BAD BAD MANâ€

Yep, the sky is falling too.