Bush vs. Congress

THE CHAIRMAN of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republican Arlen Specter, wants to force the Bush administration to explain and defend the president's practice of quietly declaring he will not obey laws passed by Congress. The public first became aware of this when Bush appended a ''signing statement" to the anti-torture amendment of Senator John McCain.

The full extent of the president's attempt to create stealth vetoes became evident when the Globe's Charlie Savage reported April 30 that Bush had used this technique to exempt himself from the reach of more than 750 laws, far more than any previous president. Specter's hearing next month will be most useful if it goes beyond an investigation of this practice and points the way to a reassertion of Congress's truncated authority.

Specter's statements when he announced the hearing show that he, at least, knows the stakes. Calling the signing statements a ''very blatant encroachment" on the powers reserved to Congress by the Constitution, Specter said, ''There may as well soon not be a Congress . . . And I think that most members don't understand what's happening."

What's happening is that a president who prides himself on being the first in modern times to go so long without vetoing a bill has found a way to reject legislation that restricts executive branch authority in ways he doesn't like. Beyond reserving the right to set aside the anti-torture law, Bush has used signing statements to nullify rules and regulations for the military, affirmative-action requirements, safeguards against political interference in federally funded research, limits on the use of US troops in Colombia, and protections for whistle-blowers who tell Congress about alleged government wrongdoing.

Taken together, these exemptions create a sweeping expansion of executive power at the expense of Congress. Specter's first challenge in the hearing is to quiz administration officials aggressively enough so that other members of Congress will recognize how their authority has silently leaked down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House.

Despite Bush's encroachments, Congress still has the power of the purse. If the hearings are effective, Specter and others should be able to persuade Congress to cut funding for certain programs that Bush wants to operate his way, not Congress's way. Representative Edward Markey of Malden said Specter must demonstrate to senators that both Republicans and Democrats in Congress lose power to stealth vetoes.

Specter asks, ''What's the point of having a statute if . . . the president can cherry-pick what he likes and what he doesn't like?"

If Congress doesn't resolve this, the ideal of democracy that Bush wants to be the basis of his foreign policy will suffer a defeat at home.