Washington – Senators on the Judiciary Committee accused President Bush of an “unprecedented” and “astonishing” power grab on Tuesday for making use of a device that gave him the authority to revise or ignore more than 750 laws enacted since he became president.
By using what are known as signing statements, memorandums issued with legislation as he signs it, the president has reserved the right to not enforce any laws he thinks violate the Constitution or national security, or that impair foreign relations.
A lawyer for the White House said that Bush was only doing his duty to uphold the Constitution. But Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, characterized the president’s actions as a declaration that he “will do as he pleases,” without regard to the laws passed by Congress.
“There’s a real issue here as to whether the president may, in effect, cherry-pick the provisions he likes and exclude the ones he doesn’t like,” Specter said at a hearing. “Wouldn’t it be better, as a matter of comity,” he said, “for the president to have come to the Congress and said, ‘I’d like to have this in the bill; I’d like to have these exceptions in the bill,’ so that we could have considered that?”
Specter and others are particularly upset that Bush reserved the right to interpret the torture ban passed overwhelmingly by Congress, as well as congressional oversight powers in the renewal of the Patriot Act.
Michelle Boardman, a deputy assistant attorney general, said the statements were “not an abuse of power.” Boardman said the president has the responsibility to make sure the Constitution is upheld. He uses signing statements, she argued, to “save” statutes from being found unconstitutional.