Stanford CIS

Signing Statements hint that Bush is bypassing Congressional oversight of surveillance programs

By Stanford Center for Internet and Society on

I thought President Bush had avoided having to veto a bill simply because his party controls both houses of congress. Apparently he has another new tool that has allowed him to achieve this feat. He signs bills but reserves the right to interpret his constitutional power as overriding any parts of the laws he does not agree with. Never mind that the line item veto has been declared unconstitutional. The President feels this is part of his duty to protect his own power. And who will judge the extent of his power? The President.

President Bush has made a habit of explicitly asserting this power in statements he attaches to the bills he signs. He has done this 750 times now. The practice is not entirely unprecedented. But past instances were rare and involved Presidents asserting their interpretations of vague or ambiguous provisions of bills that they thought might infringe the constitutional rights of the people. By contrast Bush has on numerous occasions purported to override clear directives of Congress by interpreting his own constitutional powers.

The only legal significance of these statements is as legislative history. More than for their legal import, these statements scare me because of what they seem to indicate about the President's intentions and actions. What I don't understand, is why he would bother to make these public statements if he was not planning to exercise this power.

One example is the recent Patriot Act renewal bill. The bill requires the justice department to report to Congress about how the provisions of the bill are used to search homes and secretly seize documents. The president's statement essentially reserves the right of the president to "order Justice Department officials to withhold any information from Congress if he decides it could impair national security or executive branch operations." See Charlie Savage's Boston Globe article. This makes me even more skeptical that the full extent of the warrantless wiretap program has been revealed to Congress, much less the public.

Why does Congress stand for this assault on its power? Why have I not heard about this practice before today? You can find more info and an interesting discussion of this topic here.

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