Specter is making a ‘statement’

July 3, 2007

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) has caved to White House demands on a wide variety of issues, but when it comes to presidential signing statements, the Pennsylvania senator has actually been pretty good. A year ago, he even tried to introduce legislation that would allow Congress to sue the president over his use of these legally dubious documents. He asked at the time, “What’s the point of having a statute if … the president can cherry-pick what he likes and what he doesn’t like? … If he doesn’t like the bill, let him veto it.”

Not surprisingly, Specter’s Republican colleagues quickly would put the kibosh on the proposal. John McCain helped kill the bill, arguing, “I think the president will enforce the law.” (Yes, McCain’s child-like naivete is rather amusing in retrospect.)

Specter, however, is quite right. We have a bizarre dynamic at play: Congress passes bills, Bush signs the bills into law, and then, in several instances, after the president issues signing statements, the Bush administration decides not to do what the law mandated. Bush has actually used signing statements to challenge more than 1,100 sections of legislation he’s signed into law — more than every other president in U.S. history combined

Thanks to a more reasonable Senate majority, Specter is giving his bill another shot.

Frustrated by the Bush administration’s continued use of presidential signing statements to challenge or ignore provisions of Congressionally approved legislation, Senate Judiciary ranking member Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) has reintroduced legislation to rein in President Bush’s ability to use the tactic.

Specter, who has long been a critic of Bush’s use of signing statements, quietly introduced his Presidential Signing Statements Act of 2007 on Friday.

“The president cannot use a signing statement to rewrite the words of a statute nor can he use a signing statement to selectively nullify those provisions he does not like,” Specter said in a floor statement.

Specter added, “If the president is permitted to rewrite the bills that Congress passes and cherry-pick which provisions he likes and does not like, he subverts the constitutional process designed by our framers.” (To which the White House apparently responded, “Duh.”)

For what it’s worth, the GAO recently found multiple instances of the administration willfully ignoring provisions of laws the president signed, justified by Bush’s dubious signing statements. The GAO report might help the debate.

Federal officials have disobeyed at least six new laws that President Bush challenged in his signing statements, a government study disclosed yesterday. The report provides the first evidence that the government may have acted on claims by Bush that he can set aside laws under his executive powers.

In a report to Congress, the non partisan Government Accountability Office studied a small sample of the bill provisions that Bush has signed into law but also challenged with signing statements. The GAO found that agencies disobeyed six such laws, while enforcing 10 others as written even though Bush had challenged them.

House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers , Democrat of Michigan, said yesterday that the GAO’s findings demonstrated a need for a more “extensive review” of how the government has followed up on hundreds of other laws challenged by Bush.

“The administration is thumbing its nose at the law,” said Conyers, one of the lawmakers who commissioned the GAO study.

With Specter’s help, maybe there’ll actually be some progress on the issue — just in time for the next president.

It’ll be interesting to see what Lieberman does with the bill.

  • maybe there’ll actually be some progress on the issue — just in time for the next president.

    You can bet this is how the right is going to handle this issue too. They are going to twiddle their thumbs gleefully while their president wipes his ass with the remaining shreds of the Constitution, and on January 20th, 2009, with a Democrat in the White House, they will find a strange, renewed interest in the rule of law and in restraining the “unitary” powers of the executive branch.

    They are all nothing but shamelessly partisan. I mean, the only way to justify opposing the prosecution and conviction of Libby after having successfully brought about the impeachment of Clinton is to be more loyal to your party than to the law, the constitution, or the country.

  • Yeah, this bill will stop Bush from violating the law! (my arse it will…)

    Impeach. Now. There is no OTHER option on the table…

  • Are Republican Senators so enamored with their titles that they’ll relinquish their actual power to this president and all who follow?

    All we need is 16 senators (17, as Lieberman insurance) who aren’t comfortable with the idea of being sock puppets and think the Constitution is more than a GD piece of paper.

    Kudos to Senator Specter. Penna can be proud.

  • Are Republican Senators so enamored with their titles that they’ll relinquish their actual power to this president and all who follow?

    Yes. Their brains have been replaced with foam ‘We’re #1’ fingers, their love of country with team spirit.

    If they possessed a filibuster-proof majority back in ’03 or ’04, they’d have happily dissolved themselves in favor of government by decree…

  • “I think the president will enforce the law.” (Yes, McCain’s child-like naivete is rather amusing in retrospect.)

    He’s just dreaming of the day he holds the mighty Signing of Statements Pen. Childish and naive indeed.

    As for Spectre, I reserve judgment until he actually does something.

  • “With Specter’s help, maybe there’ll actually be some progress on the issue — just in time for the next president.”

    And that is just the point. After Bush has done all this damage the repubs wanna make sure a democratic president won’t be allowed to do it. With a Democratic president we will loudly hear the republican rant about how Bush was wrong to act in a particular matter and it must never be allowed to happen again.
    Yet they do nothing now to stop Bush from abusing his powers. Just pathetic.

  • “The president cannot use a signing statement to rewrite the words of a statute nor can he use a signing statement to selectively nullify those provisions he does not like,” Specter said in a floor statement.

    Bush replies with a gesture involving one or more middle fingers. According to his hand-picked lawyers, the law hasn’t meant a damn thing since he finished My Pet Goat.

    Gee, Arlen, let’s think about this… Bush obviously thinks he can ignore the laws congress writes, so people might think Bush might also be violating the law, eh? Is FISA not a specific and blatant enough example? And if (if!) Bush and his cronies are criminals, maybe you and the rest of the rubberstampers should uphold your oaths and impeach the criminals.

    But Noooooo….

    Specter is just performing his cheesy little part of the Beltway Kabuki dance, and some other Republican (or Lieberman) will eventually step in and keep Bush from being held accountable, yet again.

    Meanwhile Pelosi keeps impeachment off the table.

  • Hmmmm, let’s assume the Presidential Signing Statements Act is passed by Congress…

    Does W veto it or attach a signing statement saying that he can attach signing statements during time of war, national crisis or during any other time the Commmander-in-Chief decides?

  • I think we missed any news coverage of the Enabling Act passed by the White House on September 12, 2001. That’s the only explanation for the administration’s contemptuous treatment of the Congress as a lapdog Reichstag.

  • Signing statements have no basis in law. Banning them only gives them more legitimacy than they already have. They have no more legal meaning than the doodles he does during security or hurricane briefings. Read the constitution. It’s no where. He must follow the law as written. Period. They are used to give opinion or comment on a law. Thats fine, but that comment can’t be “I won’t follow it.

  • The only statement I want to see or hear Specter make is: “I resign my position as US Senator to spend more time with my family.”

  • I agree with Bertrand Russell (#13) that passing a bill to try and ban signing statements gives the impression that signing statements are legal to begin with. I’d rather see some kind of sense of congress or something that states that the president is welcome to say anything he wants to when he signs a bill but that it is his job to enforce that bill regardless and if he doesn’t want to do that, he should veto the bill.

    The other part of that is that congress should state that anytime any member of the executive branch chooses to disobey the law as written by congress, even if the president has stated in a signing statement that he doesn’t like that part, that member will be prosecuted.

    Of course that goes back to Ed Steven’s comment (#3) about how many troops does the GAO have. How can the laws of congress be enforced if the executive branch chooses not to enforce them?

  • Of course that goes back to Ed Steven’s comment (#3) about how many troops does the GAO have. How can the laws of congress be enforced if the executive branch chooses not to enforce them?

    And here I thought Ed Stephan was parodying W channeling Stalin.

  • “Bertrand Russell” – I’ve read some comments here or there (can’t remember where) where the Supreme Court and other Federal Courts are starting to take signing statements into account when making judgements about the constitutionality of the law. A law specifically stating that signing statements are merely executive opinion and do not have the force of law may be necessary to instruct the SC and other Federal Courts in the matter. But, Specter knows that Bush would veto such a law further defining his legacy.

  • It is a sad commentary on the damage done during the Bush/Cheney years that we should be conducting this discussion without questioning the fact that we’re actually having this discussion.

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