President Bush has been routinely criticized for his use of signing statements to challenge laws passed by Congress, asserting that such laws don’t apply to him or his administration. Bush has used signing statements to evade a ban on torture and providing data on the USA Patriot Act, among others. In December he used a signing statement to authorize the opening of US mail without warrants.
Jonathan Weisman reports in today’s Washington Post that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found “160 separate provisions that Bush had objected to in signing statements.” The GAO apparently focused on 19 of those provisions and, according to Weisman’s report, “of those 19 provisions, six—nearly a third—were not carried out according to law.” The severity of the administration’s noncompliance ranged from misinterpreting legislation to relocate border checkpoints in Tucson to President Bush’s assertion that he was not bound by a ban on torture.
In 2006, for example, Congress required that the Defense Department submit its 2007 budget request broken out with cost details for its operations—including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. No such cost break-out was provided.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) failed to produce a mandated “expenditure plan for housing assistance and alternatives to the approaches that failed after Hurricane Katrina.”
President Bush, for his part, continues to insist the signing statements are warranted in order to protect the executive branch of government from encroachment by the legislative branch.
The question is why is this man still in office?
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