Maybe I’m just feeling paranoid today, but hear me out.
President Bush is a great fan of “signing statements” – extra comments that he adds to bills before signing them into law explaining how he intended to interpret what Congress has done. Previous Presidents have used signing statements as well, but not to the extent that Bush has. Both the number and scope of his signing statements far exceed what has come previously.
Take, for example, this story from the AP about a bill he signed yesterday. In it Congress mandated that any future head of FEMA must have at least five years of experience in emergency management. Bush signed the bill into law, but attached a signing statement saying that he was going to ignore that requirement.
This chills me. The whole principle behind the balance of power is that Congress makes the laws and the Executive branch executes the laws. If the President doesn’t like a particular bill he can veto it, but he can’t pick and choose which parts of the law he follows and which he ignores.
Now the hiring requirements for the director of FEMA is a relatively trivial matter. But if the President has the authority to unilaterally ignore the decisions of Congress in this situation, then where exactly do the boundaries of his power stop? Say Congress passes a law saying that all troops are to be immediately withdrawn from Iraq. What is to prevent the President from issuing a signing statement that he is ignoring that law?
This conflict between the Executive and Legislative branches has been largely hidden during the Bush Presidency because for most of it the Republicans have controlled Congress as well as the White House. But now there’s a strong possibility that the Democrats will gain control of one if not both houses of Congress. And if they do there’s also a strong possibility that they will begin passing legislation that the Bush Administration aggressively disagrees with. They may instigate serious investigations into any of a dozen potential scandals. They may try to fundamentally change the tactics that our country is using to fight Al Qaeda.
What happens next March when the Democratic Congress passes a law that President Bush refuses to follow?
I’d hardly call it a crisis. Signing statements have needed to go before the Supreme Court for a long time. If and when one makes it, the Court will either say it’s cool or it’s not. End of crisis.
I believe that signing statements that attempt to alter the bill being signed are clearly and blatantly unconstitutional.
Golf clap for OP. I am very interested in arguments and views regarding this whole “unitary executive” stuff. There are, no doubt, sophisiticated and complex reasons why my whole naive notions of “checks and balances” don’t apply to The Leader. Not least of which is that when a powerful man wants to do something, there is always someone close at hand to explain why thats all perfectly hunky-doky.
Does he, then? I’m not an American and have only rather superficial knowledge of your system, but I cannot imagine that he has the power to simply ignore a law. I understand that he signs bills into law, and that he can veto a law and that Congress can override a presidential veto with two-thirds majority if memory serves, but surely he cannot simply decide not to follow a law? If nothing else, that must be clearly impeachable.
As an aside, what happens if a President simply refuses to sign a passed bill into law? Surely there must be some mechanism in place to handle that situation, and the same or a similar mechanism must apply in this case.
Why would we have to wait until March? He’s already violated FISA, possibly the torture rules, and has said that he will continue to violate the law in other signing statements. The only problem is that, even when he violates the law, not enough people in Congress will challenge him or hold him accountable. They’re a bunch of craven lickspittles who have acquiesed to the largest Presidential power grab since FDR.
Better to ask what happens when Congress gets a spine and calls him on his bullshit.
Ah, so this is the answer to my questions above. The entity holding the President accountable is Congress, and in theory the President’s powers are pretty much unlimited if he has Congress on his side. Correct?
As I said in the pit thread, the president has a role in operating/supervising Federal agencies and officers that’s part of his Constitutionally-delegated executive role. That role cannot be invaded by Congress.
If Congress passed a bill that said the senior military staff assigned to conduct the war in Iraq would, henceforth, report to a Congressional committee (rather than the Secretary of Defense and President), I believe the President would be justified in ignoring that law.
As you say, the President does not have supreme power. But neither does Congress. They each have a Constitutional role.
Does that executive power extends as far as Pres. Bush claims it does? I have my doubts. But your claim that he must always submit to Congress is clearly mistaken.
One would think. However yesterday Bush signed a bill into law while stating that he intendeds to ignore part of it. He’s done it before but it’s never been quite this blatant before.
The President has ten days to sign or veto a bill. After that it becomes law even if he doesn’t sign it.
(There’s also a loophole called a “pocket veto” that involves not acting on a bill when Congress is in recess but its rarely used.)
The problem is that virtually everything that the federal government actually DOES is done by the executive branch. If the president has the power to override any law that Congress makes regarding the actions of federal agencies and officers, what does Congress have authority over any more?
Probably because there’s no line item veto. He has to sign the whole bill or veto the whole bill, and it’s much easier for him to just sign it say which parts he doesn’t intend to follow.
Also, the advantage of signing statements is that they’re low-profile; Bush can get some nice photo-ops about how he’s ushering in a new era of bipartisanship and openness when he just signed the new Transparency in Executive Decisions Act, then wait for the cameras to leave before putting out a signing statement saying how he’s reinterpreting 9/10ths of it where he doesn’t have to do what the law says.
