Hearing set on signing statements

WASHINGTON -- Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter yesterday scheduled a hearing for next Tuesday on President Bush's use of signing statements to claim the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office.

Specter said he is asking the Bush administration to send an official from the Justice Department to testify before the committee about the president's legal contentions, as well as several constitutional law scholars. It was not yet clear who from the administration would come, he said.

``I think that the president is trying to expand his executive authority at the expense of Congress's constitutional prerogatives, and it's very problemsome," Specter said in a phone interview. ``I want to get into the details with the administration on what they think their legal authority is."

A signing statement is an official document in which a president, while signing a bill, tells the federal government how it should interpret it. Bush has used signing statements to reserve the right to disobey more than 750 laws, saying that they conflict with the powers he believes the Constitution gives to him.

Specter said he was particularly troubled by Bush's contention in December 2005 that he had the authority, as commander in chief, to bypass a law known as the McCain Amendment, which outlawed torture. The torture ban had passed both chambers of Congress overwhelmingly.

``When the signing statements reach a point as they did with the McCain Amendment, which passed [90-9] in the Senate, and the president cherry picks [what laws he must obey or can ignore], it's pretty flagrant," Specter said.

Among the witnesses at the hearing will be Nicholas Rosenkranz , a former Bush administration lawyer who is now a Georgetown University law professor. Rosenkranz said he was still working on his testimony, but planned to address the merits of Bush's contentions as well as what sorts of things Congress could do if it did not like the signing statements.

Another witness will be Bruce Fein , a former lawyer in the Reagan administration who also sits on a task force the American Bar Association has convened to evaluate Bush's use of signing statements. Fein said he plans to tell the committee that it should include in all legislation a provision that cuts off funds for everything in the bill if a president uses a signing statement to exempt himself from following some part of the bill.

Specter has been one of the most outspoken among Republican congressional leaders in criticizing the Bush administration's expansion of its own powers, leading to grumbling among some in his party that he has gone too far.

``Constitutional responsibility come s far ahead of party loyalty," he said yesterday.