US Agencies Disobey 6 Laws that President Challenged
WASHINGTON — 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.
A signing statement is a legal document filed in the Federal Register the day a president signs a bill into law. It instructs the executive branch about how to implement the new statutes the bill creates, and sometimes it states that certain provisions are unconstitutional and need not be enforced as written.
Bush’s signing statements have drawn fire because he has used them to challenge more than 1,100 sections of bills — more than all previous presidents combined. The sample the GAO studied represents a small portion of the laws Bush has targeted, but its report concluded that sometimes the government has gone on to disobey those laws.
For example, one law requires the Customs and Border Patrol to relocate its illegal immigrant checkpoints near Tucson every seven days to prevent smugglers from being able to predict where they are, but the agency failed to do so. The border patrol told the GAO that the law is flawed because it “diverts resources,” and it characterized the requirement as “advisory.”
In his signing statement of Oct. 18, 2005, Bush instructed the border patrol to view the “relocation provision as advisory rather than mandatory” on the assertion that only the president has the constitutional authority to decide how to deploy law enforcement officers.
None of the laws the GAO investigated included the president’s most controversial claims involving national security, such as his assertion that he can set aside a torture ban and new oversight provisions in the USA Patriot Act because he is the commander in chief. Such material is classified.
Virginia Sloan , president of the Constitution Project — a bipartisan think-tank that has condemned signing statements as a threat to the checks and balances that limit presidential power — said yesterday that the GAO report shows that signing statements matter.
“The findings of this report should come as no great surprise: When the president tells federal agencies they don’t have to follow the law, they often don’t,” Sloan said. “This report should put to rest any doubts as to the real impact of signing statements. The Constitution does not bestow upon the president the power to simply ignore portions of laws he doesn’t like.”
But Tony Fratto , a White House spokesman, defended Bush’s use of signing statements and his expansive view of the president’s constitutional powers.
“We are executing the law as we believe we are empowered to do so,” Fratto said. “The signing statements certainly do and should have an impact. They are real.”
Still, the GAO report’s authors made clear that it was beyond the scope of their study to determine whether the federal agencies’ failure to enforce laws as written is due to Bush’s signing statements, or a mere coincidence. They did not interview individual officials to learn whether the signing statements played a role in their actions.
“Although we found that the agencies did not execute the provisions as enacted, we cannot conclude that agency noncompliance was the result of the President’s signing statements,” the report said.
The GAO also did not take a position on whether the Bush administration’s aggressive theories about the president’s powers to act beyond the will of Congress are constitutionally sound.
Of the other five laws that the study found were disobeyed, two provisions required agencies to get permission from a congressional committee before taking certain actions. In both cases, the agencies notified the committee but acted without their permission — just as Bush’s signing statements instructed them.
The other three provisions involved the executive branch giving information to congressional oversight committees, including plans for emergency housing following a disaster; budget documents related to certain military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan; and a proposal to fix a problem related to funding for military medical services. In all three cases, the administration did not obey the laws as written.
The GAO conducted its study by looking at all the provisions in 11 appropriations bills for fiscal year 2006 that Bush challenged in signing statements. It counted 160 such laws that the president had claimed a right to ignore.
Investigators then selected a representative sample of 19 bill provisions Bush had targeted and asked agencies to explain whether and how they had obeyed the provisions. It found that 10 such laws were enforced as written, six were not enforced as written, and three did not have to be enforced because the circumstance envisioned had not materialized.
The revelation that investigators had found six laws that were disobeyed within the small sample prompted angry words from the other lawmaker who commissioned the GAO study, Senate Appropriations Committee chairman Robert Byrd , Democrat of West Virginia. He called Bush’s signing statements a “power grab” that undermined Congress’s authority to write the laws.
“The White House cannot pick and choose which laws it follows and which it ignores,” Byrd said. “When a president signs a bill into law, the president signs the entire bill. The administration cannot be in the business of cherry-picking the laws it likes and the laws it doesn’t.”
But Erik Ablin , a Justice Department spokesman, said, “We reject allegations that the administration is ignoring or selectively following the law.”
Bush’s use of the device became the subject of widespread controversy in 2006 following his challenge to a high-profile torture ban the White House had tried to defeat in Congress.
Since Democrats took over Congress, Bush has not issued a signing statement. But Fratto said the reason for their absence is that Congress has sent few major bills to the president’s desk, not because of any policy change.
© Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
Welcome to a right wing police state or should I say a White Corporate American State…
Wasn’t it Saddam Hussein that wrote his own laws, these acts are far removed from a progressive western democracy it makes a banana republic look legitimate
Would the Swiss please invade us and bring us democracy?
what is the effective difference between a presidential signing statement and a presidential line-item veto?
I hear he is planning an a signing statement overruling the law of gravity..everyone hold on tight!!!
Just more high crimes and misdemeanors the Democrats evade because they don’t want to make Nancy Pelosi, the first US female President in 2007. They’d just rather see the kids being killed and maimed until and unless it fits their political goals to stop it through impeachment/removal.
With a man whose grandfather was in bed with the Nazis do you expect any different? There is a way to ‘gong’ BushCo out of the Whitehouse, but I’m beginning to believe Pelosi is sleeping with Duh-bya. She has about as much heart as the lion in the Wizard of Oz before he got his ticker/watch. Just do it, Nancy, most Americans will back your play, and those that don’t are un-patriotic traitors.
“The administration is thumbing its nose at the law…”
Just figuring that out, are we? Jeeze…
And it’s not “thumbing its nose,” it’s flipping us the two-fisted bird while ramming assorted objects up you know where and stealing everything they can while we struggle to remove said foreign objects.
What other reason could there be for unconstitutional presidential hissy fits recorded on the bills passed by congress?
When it came to light back in late 2004 early 2005 that the President and Vice Presidents audiences consisted on handpicked suppporters who were allowed into public spaces with “admissions tickets”, to hear them speak….I thought……this is really weird. It reminded me of the elaborate media productions and frenzied applause from thousands of supporters during the 1930’s Hitler black and white film clips. The responsive and glowing adulation, clapping and stomping, cheering and fake standing ovations from the Bush and Cheney audience were broadcast all over the nation by a fraudulent media which has a huge stake and investment in the Administration in the form of lobbyists seeking influence and deregualtion of the FCC and SEC. The degradation and downfall of democracy requires that no demonstrators or contrary voices receive a platform from which to launch an accountability program and the deregulated media is happy engage in censorship on their behalf. In this respect the news media combined with the Congress is an enabling party to a fraudulent administration. I was outraged when the fired DoJ attorneys began complaining about being mistreated and hung out to dry. Not all, but most were perfectly comfortable trampling on the Constitution on behalf of the administration as long as the GRF’s provided them with careers and a safe harbor. But then the greedy racist fraudulent attorneys forgot they may need the same consitiutional rights they just denied, and have been meticulously denying the public at large. What goes around comes around.
Cordially,
S. Ray DeRusse
www.bccmeteorites.com
Signing Statements are a Joke!! The President is using these like a Line Item Veto… Since When did Congress & the American People Give him this Authority???
We should throw lawbreakers in Jail!!!
if a common Citisen broke a Law where would we be?? America where are you??
America is a myth for schoolchildren.
Santa Claus has more substance.
This all seems to have been played out before.
Rome is but one example, and a very good one.
I believe it was Tacitus who said (and if I am incorrect, I am sure there are other readers who will correct me) “the more corrupt the society, the more numerous the laws”.
Nero, Caligula and others took upon themselves the same power that the Bush administration has. They were assassinated , and the memories of their atrocities left to history.
I believe that one method (and one that has not been tried before) to prevent this kind of abuse in the future would be to hold the entire administration over for trials. When they are convicted, they should be imprisoned and stripped of their material wealth. Yes, deny their children an inheritance, (at least there would be no “inheritance tax”), and make their spouses poor. The convicted would be left to spend their “time” in a small concrete cell. For the “lifers” when they die in those cells, take their elderly bodies to the prison grave yard to be buried with the other criminals, mark their graves so that all who visit the grave yard will know what happens to even the highest ranking criminals.
That may serve as a deterrent for future criminals such as this administration has been shown to be crawling with.
If “public servants” are truly “public servants” then they should be treated as such. If a servant steals from or cheats their employer, they are usually charged with crimes, and their employment terminated. If they are convicted they serve their time. This administration has acted above the law from the very beginning. They have maintained their perpetual smirk truly believing themselves to be “above the law” via executive privilege. The only body of power they will recognize is a concerted effort by the people, of the people, for the people.
The USA has a wonderful opportunity to be a positive example to the world as well as history, but then so did the Romans.
Yellow Horse
Wow, Bush has challenged 1.100 sections of bills. Considering that he can barely read. This administration is a heaven for corporate lobbyists and interests. I bet the former provided all those 1.100 sections word by word.