Kerry joins push to limit signing statements

WASHINGTON -- Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts announced yesterday that he is joining a bipartisan congressional effort to roll back the Bush administration's use of signing statements to challenge laws.

Kerry was the first cosponsor of a bill filed by Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, titled the "Presidential Signing Statements Act of 2007." A Kerry spokeswoman said the lawmakers would propose the measure as an amendment to a defense-spending bill this summer.

"The Bush administration's abuse of signing statements is clearly unconstitutional and renders the Constitution's system of checks and balances null and void," Kerry said. "With these statements, the president has effectively subverted the law and the legislative process without actually ever using a veto. No administration should be allowed to cherry-pick legislation this way."

A signing statement allows the president to instruct the executive branch that it need not obey sections of bills that the White House declares to be unconstitutional -- usually because they are checks on executive power. Bush has used the mechanism to challenge more than 1,100 such laws -- more than all previous presidents combined. Among the laws he has challenged are a torture ban and oversight provisions in the USA Patriot Act.

The Bush administration has defended its use of signing statements, saying that previous presidents also used the device.

The legislation, which Specter filed last week, would instruct courts not to cite a signing statement when interpreting a disputed law. It would also enable Congress to submit its views about the correct meaning of a statute in any lawsuit in which the interpretation or constitutionality of a law is in question and the president issued a signing statement when the bill was signed.

Last year, Specter, who was then chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, held an oversight hearing on Bush's use of signing statements following the publication of a series of reports about them in the Globe. Specter later filed a similar version of the bill, but it did not receive a vote before Congress adjourned.