Signing statements attempt to give president new powers

The president has an extraordinary amount of power, including the power to veto legislation with which he disagrees.
President Bush has rarely used the veto pen -- in fact the first time he did was in the sixth year of his presidency, when he vetoed legislation that would have allowed limited use of embryonic stem cells in federally funded medical research.
While we disagree with the president's position on stem cell research, at least his veto was forthright and constitutional.
The same cannot be said about another legislative tactic President Bush has adopted as almost a matter of routine, the attachment of signing statements to legislation.
Essentially, the statements tell Congress that the president disagrees with the legislation that it has passed, but that he doesn't intend to veto it -- nor does he intend to be bound by it.
Setting a record
It's not that President Bush is the first president to resort to signing statements, but he is by far the most prolific. The 42 presidents preceding George W. Bush produced fewer than 600 signing statements (George H.W. Bush challenged 146 pieces of legislation; Bill Clinton, 105). Five and a half years into his presidency, Bush has signed more than 800. At this rate, he could approach 1,200 by the end of his presidency, twice as many as all the presidents before him combined.
The number and breadth of the statements are troubling, because they belie an underlying philosophy of the Bush administration that it is this president's job to rehabilitate what the administration views as a weakened executive branch. This is nothing new. Richard Nixon set out to establish what was described by his critics as an imperial presidency, The irony is that his overreaching and his downfall were largely responsible for the erosion of presidential power that Vice President Dick Cheney has deplored.
The president's fondness for signing statements is finally getting the attention it deserves. Two weeks ago, a task force of the American Bar Association released a report describing Bush's unprecedented stream of signing statements as a dangerous challenge to the constitutional checks and balances inherent in the Constitution.
The ABA report called on Congress to exert more oversight and empower the courts to review presidential signing statements asserting the president's right to "ignore or not enforce laws."
Congress shows signs of awakening to the danger.
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the chairman of Senate Judiciary Committee, sees the signing statements as "a challenge to the plain language of the Constitution." Perhaps through the hearings Specter will be holding, the American people will get a better idea of what is at stake.