In office since 2000, President Bush has vetoed only one piece of legislation. On the face of it, this may mean that during all this time he opposed only this one bill: enabling embyo stem cell research. However, during the same time, Bush has written over 800 signing statements. What does this mean? Did he approve the bills? Disapprove them? Was he trying to keep us in the dark? Or was he afraid to veto the legislation?
Congress has a right to receive from the president a YES vote or a VETO. Then it would know how to proceed. It is flagrant disregard of our constitutional system of checks and balances for the president to write in a signing statement that he would disregard what this law says if he thought it would conflict with his duties as commander-in-chief.
This is essentially what he wrote in his signing statement with reference to the torture amendment. He thumbed his nose at Congress. He said, I don't have to listen to you. Only I will decide whether torture is needed or not.
Is it any wonder that the head of the American Bar Association (ABA) appointed a special task force on signing statements? The chairman of the task force, Neal Sonnett, said this:
"It's clear that a large number of the signing statements that have been issued by this administration claim the authority to disregard the law. This president is not the first president to do that. But he clearly has escalated the practice to what the task force believes is a dangerous new high. That has an impact on the separation of powers, and if it's left unchecked, it could do damage to our system and to the Constitution."
The task force makes several recommendations. The most intriguing one is that Congress should pass legislation enabling it to seek judicial review by the U.S. Supreme Court if the president issues a signing statement or other document that contradicts "the clear intent of Congress."
Arlen Specter, the judiciary committee chairman, during a hearing on the issue, said:
"There is a sense that the president has taken the signing statements far beyond the customary purviews. There's a real issue here as to whether the president may, in effect, cherry-pick the provisions he likes, excluding the provisions he doesn't like. . . . The president has the option under the Constitution to veto or not."
On the senate floor, Specter said:
"We will submit legislation to the United States Senate which will...authorize the Congress to undertake judicial review of those signing statements with the view to having the president's acts declared unconstitutional."
Too bad we have reached this point. But we must maintain the integrity of our system. We have 3 equal branches of government. No branch should be allowed to usurp power that must be shared with the others. The president has a choice: sign or veto. He can't pick and choose parts of the bill he likes and other parts he does not like. He must act on the bill as a whole.
The president must be reined in. Congress must pass a bill that enables Congress to sue the president.
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