GAO examines signing statements cases

Source: AP

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration sometimes fails to follow all provisions of laws after President Bush attaches "signing statements" meant to interpret or restrict the legislation, congressional examiners say.

Lawmakers who asked the Government Accountability Office to conduct the study said it was further proof that the Bush White House oversteps constitutional bounds in ignoring the will of Congress.

"Too often, the Bush administration does what it wants, no matter the law. It says what it wants, no matter the facts," Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., said Monday. Byrd and House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., requested the report.

...

Byrd and Conyers said Bush has issued 149 signing statements, 127 of which raised some objection. They said the statements often raise multiple objections, resulting in more than 700 challenges to distinct provisions of law.

The GAO said signing statements accompanied 11 of the 12 spending bills in 2006, singling out 160 specific provisions in those bills.

Read more: http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/17386180.htm

One of Bush's signing statements states the the GAO has no authority over the White House. Move along, nothing to see here.

Congress and the Whitehouse will need to be made accountable because the American public is going to want to know where all this money went

Laws were broken and not enforced

the government of the US is broken

I was being facetious, however, another reply to my initial post thinks the signing statements are written so that nothing will interfere with the unitary executive....well, everything but the bazooka blast that will occur in the Lincoln bedroom when nothing is done about these cretins.

The main gist of most of his signing statements say they refuse anything that may interfere with the "Unitary Executive"

I thought the joke was completely ridiculous. Guess not.

The constant revelations no longer shock, and Congress's lack of action is dispiriting.

the DLC dems...if we put in hillary that is what the big guys want and so be it..back to business as usual...hello third world country

Nothing has been done about the crimes these people have committed, Nothing will be done in the future.

I have never been able to get my around that...

That's how. Seriously.

back in the '90s I remember conservative publications having a few complaints about Clinton. Often they even quoted lawmakers. (I usually read both sides, it's fun to see where left and right fail to converse because they're doing so facing in different directions 200 miles apart.)

The repub controlled Congress passed laws, and Clinton didn't always enforce every jot and tittle. The repubs didn't call in the GAO or anybody else, as far as I know, to investigate. It would have been considerably harder without a signs. However, for the entirety of Clinton's term, I had my nose in books in grad school.

And, come to think of it, neither did bush1 enforce every provision of every law. Nor did Reagan. Or Carter. Or, probably, Nixon (although I was but 16 when he left office, and didn't follow politics all that closely then).

Just as the "continuity of government" directive, I think that much of the problem is that * makes public what other presidents keep secret. They don't say up front which provisions of which laws they'll slight. They didn't make public their continuity of government directives.

Topic is also covered in today's Boston Globe with a slightly more aggressive headline.

US agencies disobey 6 laws that president challenged

By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | June 19, 2007

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.

http://tinyurl.com/3yf55d

This is not surprising news, just more evidence of malfeasance.

Peace,
freefall

Source: New York Times

Lawmakers to Investigate Bush on Laws and Intent

By CARL HULSE
Published: June 20, 2007
WASHINGTON, June 19 — Lawmakers say they plan to dig deeper into the Bush administration’s use of bill-signing statements as ways to circumvent Congressional intent.

In a limited examination of the administration’s practice of reserving the authority to interpret legislation, the Government Accountability Office determined that in 6 out of 19 cases it studied, the administration did not follow the law as written after President Bush expressed reservations about some legislative directives. By using signing statements, the president has reserved the right not to enforce any laws he thinks violate the Constitution or national security, or that impair foreign relations.

The accountability office, a watchdog agency, in a report issued Monday, did not pass judgment on whether the agencies were responding to the signing statements or whether the president had the constitutional authority not to comply. But Congressional officials said Tuesday that the findings were alarming since the administration had apparently not complied with the law in 30 percent of the cases scrutinized.

“Federal law is not some buffet line where the president can pick parts of some laws to follow and others to reject,” said Senator Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia and chairman of the Appropriations Committee, one of two senior lawmakers who sought the review.

Mr. Byrd and aides to Representative John Conyers Jr., the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee and joined in seeking the study, said their next step would be to explore the signing statements to determine the broad extent of their impact. Mr. Byrd noted that another agency, the Congressional Research Service, had identified 700 provisions in law questioned by the administration. “Moving forward, I plan to ask auditors to take a look at these provisions and determine what legal violations they find,” Mr. Byrd said. “Once we have the facts, we will be able to determine the next steps.”


Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/20/washington/20cong.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1182352800-zx1pgtt3xYvy8jyb81VzQg

Nothing, I'll bet.

...but maybe, just maybe, with all the investigations in the works, they are building the case for impeachment. I suppose each member of congress has their own tipping point so to speak for impeachment. I mean, at some point, after collecting data and investigating, at least a few will turn onto the idea... I hope.

I used to append some such statement to my pessimistic DU posts -- about how I'd love to be proven wrong.

But now I'm getting so pessimistic about the Democrats actually doing anything to these bastards that I don't even feel like like adding that any more.