Text 1410, 303 rader
Skriven 2006-06-26 01:52:00 av BOB KLAHN (1:123/140)
Kommentar till en text av JOHN MASSEY
Ärende: Huh?
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...
DC>> It's common knowledge that GWB did add a signing statement to
DC>> that bill. And, he openly stated that it didn't apply to
DC>> his rulings on what constitutes torture.
JM> Then you should not have a problem providing a cite.
That has been in the news so much, it's obvious you are just
wasting time.
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THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING
<http://www.boston.com/news/globe/>
Hearing set on signing statements
Senate panel will probe rationale for Bush actions
By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | June 22, 2006
WASHINGTON -- Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter
yesterday scheduled a hearing for next Tuesday on President
Bush's use of signing statements to claim the authority to
disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office.
Specter said he is asking the Bush administration to send an
official from the Justice Department to testify before the
committee about the president's legal contentions, as well as
several constitutional law scholars. It was not yet clear who
from the administration would come, he said.
``I think that the president is trying to expand his executive
authority at the expense of Congress's constitutional
prerogatives, and it's very problemsome," Specter said in a
phone interview. ``I want to get into the details with the
administration on what they think their legal authority is."
A signing statement is an official document in which a
president, while signing a bill, tells the federal government
how it should interpret it. Bush has used signing statements to
reserve the right to disobey more than 750 laws, saying that
they conflict with the powers he believes the Constitution gives
to him.
Specter said he was particularly troubled by Bush's contention
in December 2005 that he had the authority, as commander in
chief, to bypass a law known as the McCain Amendment, which
outlawed torture. The torture ban had passed both chambers of
Congress overwhelmingly.
``When the signing statements reach a point as they did with
the McCain Amendment, which passed [90-9] in the Senate, and
the president cherry picks [what laws he must obey or can
ignore], it's pretty flagrant," Specter said.
Among the witnesses at the hearing will be Nicholas Rosenkranz
, a former Bush administration lawyer who is now a Georgetown
University law professor. Rosenkranz said he was still working
on his testimony, but planned to address the merits of Bush's
contentions as well as what sorts of things Congress could do if
it did not like the signing statements.
Another witness will be Bruce Fein , a former lawyer in the
Reagan administration who also sits on a task force the
American Bar Association has convened to evaluate Bush's use of
signing statements. Fein said he plans to tell the committee
that it should include in all legislation a provision that cuts
off funds for everything in the bill if a president uses a
signing statement to exempt himself from following some part of
the bill.
Specter has been one of the most outspoken among Republican
congressional leaders in criticizing the Bush administration's
expansion of its own powers, leading to grumbling among some in
his party that he has gone too far.
``Constitutional responsibility come s far ahead of party
loyalty," he said yesterday.
© Copyright
<http://www.boston.com/help/bostoncom_info/copyright> 2006 The
New York Times Company
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OUTLOOK
June 19, 2006
Caught in the Middle
By Brian Friel, National Journal
<http://www.nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly>
Is President Bush defying Congress? That is what critics say
he's doing when he signs bills into law but also issues
"signing statements" challenging the constitutionality of
provisions in those laws.
Bush has issued signing statements for more than 100 laws in
which he argues that Congress has stepped unconstitutionally on
a variety of presidential powers, from his role as
commander-in-chief to his authority to conduct foreign policy to
his control of the executive branch. The pronouncements imply
that his administration isn't going to carry out any such
mandates.
Critics say that the signing statements are being used to
counter congressional attempts to direct executive branch
actions, part of a broader Bush administration effort to expand
executive power.
Signing statements gained prominence in December, when Bush
issued a declaration in response to an amendment banning torture
of prisoners in U.S. custody. The law's language had been
brokered with the White House by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., but
Bush declared he would construe the provision "in a manner
consistent with the constitutional authority of the president to
supervise the unitary executive branch and as
commander-in-chief, and consistent with the constitutional
limitations on the judicial power."
Though the administration says it does not use torture, critics
said the statement gave the executive branch wiggle room to
torture prisoners.
Criticism of signing statements has been rising ever since. The
Boston Globe published a series of articles beginning in April
questioning the use of the statements on some 750 provisions.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., wants
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to come to Capitol Hill to
explain the use of signing statements. "The president has
asserted his authority to pick and choose what he likes and what
he doesn't like in legislation," Specter said on the Senate
floor on May 26.
The American Bar Association has launched a skeptical review.
"It is an issue that really implicates the very foundation of
our democracy," ABA President Michael Greco, a Boston lawyer,
said in an interview. "The Founders created equilibrium among
the three branches, and there is concern that the executive
branch has created an imbalance in that equilibrium."
The administration's interpretation of part of the torture
amendment, concerning whether prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have
the right to appeal their detention in federal court, is being
considered by the Supreme Court and lower courts -- which have
never used a signing statement to determine a statute's meaning.
Meanwhile, however, most of the signing statements issued by
Bush -- and past presidents, for that matter -- seem largely
symbolic and do not necessarily change how agencies implement
legislation, according to some scholars and a review of the
implementation of several statements. Though the president's
lawyers may raise legal arguments against congressional actions,
bureaucrats across the federal government are reluctant to
challenge the appropriators and committee chiefs who control
their budgets.
For the past three years, for example, Congress has included in
major appropriations bills a provision blocking funding for an
Office of Personnel Management review of the fairly common
practice of "legislative branch details," in which executive
branch employees spend as long as a year working in the Capitol
Hill offices of members of Congress or congressional committees.
In a signing statement, the Bush administration seemed to
suggest that it would conduct the review of details anyway,
explaining that the provision would be construed "consistent
with the president's constitutional authority to supervise the
unitary executive branch and as commander-in-chief, and
recognizing that the president cannot be compelled to give up
the authority of his office as a condition of receiving the
funds necessary to carry out the duties of his office."
Despite those assertions of authority, OPM abandoned its effort
to monitor legislative branch details. "It just never took
effect," OPM spokesman Michael Orenstein said.
Bush also objected to a provision in last year's highway bill
that instructed the Transportation Department to consult with
lawmakers on appointments to a motorcycle safety council. Bush
said he would interpret the provision "as calling for, but not
mandating, such consultation." Nonetheless, the Transportation
Department has been accepting advice from members of Congress on
who should serve on the panel, letters from lawmakers to the
department show.
Several presidential and legal scholars said that the signing
statements are best viewed as part of the constant struggle for
supremacy between the legislative and executive branches, and
that they usually serve as signals of principle that the
president sends to Congress in that struggle.
But on an informal basis, the agencies under the president and
the committees that oversee them tend to cooperate on the
implementation of policy. Louis Fisher, a specialist at the law
library at the Library of Congress, said that Justice Department
lawyers, the Office of Management and Budget, and the White
House may issue such broad policy statements, but "the rest of
government is just trying to get things done."
Fisher, formerly an analyst at the Congressional Research
Service, wrote in a November 2005 CRS report that congressional
committees continue to exercise significant control over the
actions of federal agencies, despite Bush's objections and those
of past presidents who have argued that the agencies report to
the White House, not to Capitol Hill.
In 1983, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress could not force
agencies to clear their actions with a congressional committee
because such a requirement would violate separation-of-powers
rules.
The next year, appropriations committees included seven
provisions in laws requiring agencies, NASA among them, to seek
prior approval of actions from the committees. President Reagan
implied that he would ignore the requirement. The House
Appropriations Committee retaliated, saying that it would simply
withhold money from NASA.
Then-NASA Administrator James Beggs and appropriators ended up
working out an informal procedure in which the appropriators
would still get to pre-approve NASA decisions. Most agencies
continue to operate under such arrangements with appropriations
and authorizing committees; Fisher found that the budget manuals
for the departments of Defense, Energy, Transportation, and
Treasury all instruct agency officials to make sure that
congressional committees approve of their plans.
"If Congress wants to batter the agency head, they're going to
get what they want," Fisher said. "All the legal arguments melt
away."
Christopher Kelley, a political scientist at Miami University
of Ohio, said the signing statements are intended to influence
executive branch officials perhaps even more than they are meant
to influence courts. "Starting with the Reagan administration,
[presidents] have put a lot of effort in trying to get the
bureaucracy to bend toward the president's position," Kelley
said.
Kelley said that agencies may not follow through on some
statements that are not particularly important to the
administration, but they do heed others. In 2002, for example,
Bush announced in the signing statement for the Sarbanes-Oxley
corporate accountability law that he would interpret
whistle-blower rights more narrowly than Congress had written
them.
Labor Department Solicitor Eugene Scalia followed through on the
president's interpretation, issuing a brief adhering to Bush's
guidelines. The department backed down, however, after pressure
from lawmakers (and Scalia's departure from Labor).
"In most of the cases where [presidents] make a challenge, most
of them are not carried out," Kelley said. "They pick their
battles."
A Bush administration background paper says that presidents
going back to James Monroe have issued signing statements,
describing the practice as "an ordinary part of a respectful
constitutional 'dialogue' between the branches." But Rep. Barney
Frank, D-Mass., introduced a bill at the end of May that would
create a procedure for Congress to overrule signing statements
that challenge legislation.
Frank said statements declaring portions of law
unconstitutional are an abuse of power. "If we do something
that's unconstitutional, he has two constitutional options:
First, veto the bill. Secondly, arrange for it to go to court,"
Frank said in an interview.
Meanwhile, Bradley Patterson, a presidential scholar and a
National Academy of Public Administration fellow, said the
signing statements are part of a natural separation-of-powers
struggle. "The president and the Congress are constantly
conflicting and engaged in a massive and ancient conflict of
influence and power," Patterson said. "It's kind of a game
they're playing. Congress writes its statement in the law, the
president writes his statement in the signing statement."
And the bureaucrats who actually implement the laws are caught
in between.
This document is located at
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0606/061906ol.htm
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©2006 by National Journal Group Inc. All rights reserved.
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BOB KLAHN bob.klahn@sev.org http://home.toltbbs.com/bobklahn
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