Senators renew call for hearings on signing statements
Seek oversight of Bush's powers
WASHINGTON -- Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter yesterday renewed his vow to hold an oversight hearing on the Bush administration's use of signing statements, saying he ``totally opposed" the president's practice of pronouncing himself exempt from obeying statutes even as he signs them into law.
``I think there is a very strong sense in the Congress in opposition to signing statements," Specter told reporters yesterday. ``We're going to go into the background and get some specifics from the administration on why they think they're appropriate, and consider what we can do. . . . We want to get a fuller statement from the president about what he thinks his authority is here."
Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, said on May 2 that he planned to hold a hearing in June. At the time, he denounced Bush's use of signing statements as ``a very blatant encroachment" on Congress's constitutional power to write the law. But with June half over, Specter has yet to schedule the hearing.
Senate aides said the delay is due in part to the Judiciary Committee's busy schedule, which has included hearings on judicial nominations, immigration, voting rights, the administration's domestic spying programs, and proposed constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage and give Congress the power to outlaw flag burning.
But the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, said in an interview yesterday that it was time to move forward with a hearing on signing statements.
Leahy said that Bush's use of signing statements to claim the right to disobey laws was ``an egregious violation of the law and the Constitution, and they're getting away with it because they have a rubber-stamp Congress that won't stand up for the law and the Constitution."
``Basically the White House has determined that they'll put the president and those around him above the laws that everybody else has to follow, and the Republican-controlled Congress won't speak up," Leahy said.
Specter, however, has been more outspoken than any other Republican congressional leader in criticizing the Bush administration's attempts to expand presidential power.
Last week, for example, he released a letter he had written to Vice President Dick Cheney expressing anger for having allegedly undermined Specter's attempts to subpoena telephone company executives about the administration's domestic spying programs.
In the letter, Specter warned that the administration's efforts to expand executive power at the expense of Congress -- including ``the presidential signing statements where the president seeks to cherry-pick which parts of the statute he will follow" -- could lead to ``a constitutional confrontation between Congress and the president."
The Bush administration says that its use of signing statements is legal and that previous presidents have used them. But critics say that the current administration has gone far beyond any predecessor.
Bush has challenged more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, more than all presidents combined. At the same time, he has never vetoed a bill, giving Congress no chance to override his judgments.
Among the laws he has challenged are a ban on torturing detainees, oversight provisions in the Patriot Act, whistle-blower protections for executive branch employees, safeguards against political interference in taxpayer-funded research, and a restriction against ordering US troops in Colombia to engage in combat.
Earlier this month, the American Bar Association's board of governors voted unanimously to create a bipartisan task force to evaluate Bush's use of signing statements. 