Lawmakers to Investigate Bush on Laws and Intent

By Carl Hulse
The New York Times

Wednesday 20 June 2007

Washington - Lawmakers say they plan to dig deeper into the Bush administration's use of bill-signing statements as ways to circumvent Congressional intent.

In a limited examination of the administration's practice of reserving the authority to interpret legislation, the Government Accountability Office determined that in 6 out of 19 cases it studied, the administration did not follow the law as written after President Bush expressed reservations about some legislative directives. By using signing statements, the president has reserved the right not to enforce any laws he thinks violate the Constitution or national security, or that impair foreign relations.

The accountability office, a watchdog agency, in a report issued Monday, did not pass judgment on whether the agencies were responding to the signing statements or whether the president had the constitutional authority not to comply. But Congressional officials said Tuesday that the findings were alarming since the administration had apparently not complied with the law in 30 percent of the cases scrutinized.

"Federal law is not some buffet line where the president can pick parts of some laws to follow and others to reject," said Senator Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia and chairman of the Appropriations Committee, one of two senior lawmakers who sought the review.

Mr. Byrd and aides to Representative John Conyers Jr., the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee and joined in seeking the study, said their next step would be to explore the signing statements to determine the broad extent of their impact. Mr. Byrd noted that another agency, the Congressional Research Service, had identified 700 provisions in law questioned by the administration.

"Moving forward, I plan to ask auditors to take a look at these provisions and determine what legal violations they find," Mr. Byrd said. "Once we have the facts, we will be able to determine the next steps."

The Bush administration's frequent use of signing statements has been one front in the battle between the White House and some in Congress over the power of the executive branch.

Administration officials said that it was fully within the president's power to interpret how laws should be carried out by the executive branch and that the White House had acted appropriately to keep Congress from overreaching and meddling too much in the independent executive branch of government.

"The executive branch has an obligation to remain within constitutional limits," said Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman. "The point of the signing statement is to advise where the executive sees those limits."

The accountability office said signing statements date back to the 19th century and might have started with President Andrew Jackson's declaration that a road Congress wanted built from Detroit to Chicago would not extend beyond Michigan.

Mr. Byrd and Mr. Conyers cited a Congressional Research Service finding in April that the Bush administration had made use of the statements to raise objections to provisions of the laws he was signing to a much greater extent than any of his predecessors. Critics said Mr. Bush was relying on the statements to avoid veto fights with Congress, even when it was under Republican control, while still killing provisions he found objectionable.

The accountability office said Mr. Bush had cited an array of rationales in objecting to aspects of the laws in question, some related to his power as commander in chief and others related to his role as chief executive. In reviewing a selection of 19 provisions cited in signing statements, the investigators found 10 were carried out as expected, and 6 were not carried out; in 3 others, the provisions were moot.

Among those not carried out were requirements that the Pentagon include justifications for the Iraq war spending in its annual budget request, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency submit a housing plan, and that the Customs Service and Border Patrol frequently relocate checkpoints in the Tucson area. In that case, Congress directed that the checkpoints be moved every seven days, but the president objected, saying such decisions on deployment of federal law enforcement officers fell solely within his power and that he would consider the relocation provision to be advisory rather than mandatory.

Mr. Conyers said the findings showed that the administration was "thumbing its nose at the law." Mr. Fratto noted that the White House had not issued any signing statements for legislation sent to the president this year by the Democratically controlled Congress. But he said it was more a result of the legislative product rather than any new reluctance to embrace signing statements. "We don't do a signing statement on legislation to name a post office," he said.

-------