Bush's hedge on bill renews debate over 'signing statements'
Critics worry they may be seen as giving the president authority to disregard laws that have been passed.
WASHINGTON — Just two hours before President Bush began his State of the Union address earlier this week, his administration quietly issued a statement indicating that four provisions in a defense bill might not be "consistent with the constitutional authority of the president."
The president's action revived a controversy over his use of so-called signing statements to express his reservations about a bill even as he signs it into law.
"Congress has a right to expect that the administration will faithfully implement all of the provisions of the [act], not just the ones he happens to agree with," Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said Thursday on the Senate floor.
Bush is not the first president to issue signing statements, but controversy over them erupted two years ago when Democrats and some Republicans argued that he appeared to be using them to lay a paper trail to expand the powers of the presidency.
"There's nothing wrong with signing statements," said Martin Lederman, a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown University. "The problem is that signing statements indicate that the president does not feel bound to enforce statutes."
Courts have not ruled on what kind of legal weight the statements may carry.
Bush used signing statements frequently in his first six years as president but, ironically, has been issuing them less frequently since Democrats took control of Congress last year.
Neil Kinkopf, a law professor at Georgia State University, said Bush issued just 11 signing statements in 2007, compared to 100 or more each of the previous six years.
One reason, he suggested, is that Bush has a new crop of legal advisors -- Washington veteran Fred F. Fielding as White House counsel and Michael B. Mukasey as attorney general.
But White House spokeswoman Dana Perino suggested it was because Democrats passed fewer significant bills than their Republican predecessors.
"Remember, 2007 was the do-nothing Congress," she quipped.
In the case of Monday's statement, Bush put his signature on the 2008 authorization bill that sets policy for the Department of Defense even as he expressed concerns with four provisions. Those measures would: prohibit the administration from establishing permanent bases in Iraq or controlling Iraqi oil resources, establish a congressional commission to review military contracts in Iraq, protect contractor whistle-blowers, and put a 45-day deadline on U.S. intelligence agencies to respond to information requests from Congress' committees on intelligence and armed services.
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