Posted on 07/21/2009 8:42:42 PM PDT by Shellybenoit
As recently as Four months ago, President Obama took a swipe at President Bush and promised that he would cut down on the practice of signing statements. Essentially a memo issued by a President indicating that there were parts of a bill that he was not going to follow.
"There is no doubt that the practice of issuing such statements can be abused. Constitutional signing statements should not be used to suggest that the president will disregard statutory requirements on the basis of policy disagreements," wrote Obama, who also overturned Bush's restrictions yesterday on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.
"I will issue signing statements to address constitutional concerns only when it is appropriate to do so as a means of discharging my constitutional responsibilities," the president pledged.Obama also promised to "take appropriate and timely steps, whenever practicable" to let Congress know of his constitutional concerns about bills before they pass. He also said he would clearly lay out his constitutional objection in any signing statements he does issue. (source)
With that kind of statement its no wonder that Congresses was a bit perturbed when the President started issuing signing statements. Today Obama got a nasty note from David Obey of Wisconsin, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Barney Frank of Massachusetts, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Nita Lowey and Gregory Meeks, both of New York, who chair subcommittees on those panels. These reps wanted to know what the heck is going on?
(Excerpt) Read more at yidwithlid.blogspot.com ...
As soon as they realize the Messiah is failing, they panic and try to direct everyone’s attention to Bush. Nice.
“signing statements” ? That’s a new one. And that Bush did it too? This is yet another outrage. This is no different from deciding for yourself what laws you will obey and what laws you will not obey. Unbelievable.
Some presidents are more equal than others.
Thank's for posting that.
O is toast.
Presidential signing statement to state your position on particular laws is one thing, but isn’t Obama taking this one step further by saying he will not enforce laws he disagrees with?
the media is already circling the wagon for obama by saying, well all president did it in the past, but of course did not remind us of this when bush was doing it, only that it was some great scandal
No, not really.
I just added the link Justa posted to my favorites, as it's a window into the direction past presidents have taken us, and facts that have been severely misrepresented, such as the boston globe claiming Bush had signed 750 signing statements at a time when he had 125.
Read the short article accompanying the signings, and browse them at your leisure. You might develop numerous opinions - or not, but you will likely be a more learned FReeper for it.
I'm going to set some time aside for it, as I've never seen them.
Congress pass laws to give funding to person A. President interpret laws to mean to give funding to person B. Thats obvious abuse of power and breaking the law
when Bush directed funding of TARP from banks to GM, I thought that was breaking the law, coz thats not what the TARP was for
You can read his signing statement in full here and decide. I'm too tired and did not read what restrictions the commiecritters put in the bill.
The pertinent part of the statement is:
However, provisions of this bill within sections 1110 to 1112 of title XI, and sections 1403 and 1404 of title XIV, would interfere with my constitutional authority to conduct foreign relations by directing the Executive to take certain positions in negotiations or discussions with international organizations and foreign governments, or by requiring consultation with the Congress prior to such negotiations or discussions. I will not treat these provisions as limiting my ability to engage in foreign diplomacy or negotiations.
You can see the entire discussion here.
Q: What kind of claims does Bush make in his signing statements that has people upset?
A: In one frequently used phrase, George W. Bush has routinely asserted that he will not act contrary to the constitutional provisions that direct the president to “supervise the unitary executive branch.” This formulation can be found first in a signing statement of Ronald Reagan, and it was repeated several times by George H. W. Bush. Basically, Bush asserts that Congress cannot pass a law that undercuts the constitutionally granted authorities of the President.
Q: How can I quickly locate a lot of the controversial signing statements?
A: In our search function for all presidential papers, search on: “my constitutional authority” OR “unitary executive”. This will return about 250 documents. Most of them, from Ronald Reagan to the present are signing statements—but there are several veto messages sprinkled among them.
Also, scroll down to read what Clinton's legal counsel had to say about them.
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