Obama reins in signing statements
President to use caution, memo says
Rebuking his predecessor for the second time yesterday, President Obama declared that he will not use signing statements to disregard parts of laws because he disagrees on policy grounds, but only when he strongly believes provisions are unconstitutional.
In a presidential memo, Obama also ordered his top executive branch officials to seek advice from Attorney General Eric Holder about whether to enforce the hundreds of statements proffered by President George W. Bush. Critics contend Bush used such statements to expand his power, particularly on national security, by ignoring the intent or certain provisions of bills properly passed by Congress.
"There is no doubt that the practice of issuing such statements can be abused. Constitutional signing statements should not be used to suggest that the president will disregard statutory requirements on the basis of policy disagreements," wrote Obama, who also overturned Bush's restrictions yesterday on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.
"I will issue signing statements to address constitutional concerns only when it is appropriate to do so as a means of discharging my constitutional responsibilities," the president pledged.
Obama also promised to "take appropriate and timely steps, whenever practicable" to let Congress know of his constitutional concerns about bills before they pass. He also said he would clearly lay out his constitutional objection in any signing statements he does issue; Bush was criticized for issuing signing statements with vague reasons, often asserting his powers as commander in chief.
A series of stories in the Globe in 2006 pointed out that Bush - often with little if any public notice - issued signing statements far more often than other presidents and used them to disobey more than 750 bills approved by Congress.
They emerged as an issue after he used such statements to suggest he could bypass a law on harsh interrogations of terrorism detainees and a law requiring the FBI to tell Congress how it was using expanded police powers under the Patriot Act.
Bush issued them on a wide range of issues including affirmative action, immigration, whistle-blower protections, and safeguards against political interference in scientific research. The statements are official documents, recorded in the Federal Register, in which the president lays out his legal interpretation of a bill for the federal bureaucracy to follow. (The Globe stories won a 2007 Pulitzer Prize, journalism's highest honor, for Charlie Savage. Now with The New York Times, Savage first reported Obama's memo on the newspaper's website yesterday.)
During the presidential campaign, Obama blasted Bush for how he used signing statements but reserved the right to issue them himself, in a more restrained way. Republican presidential John McCain said he would not use them at all.
While the Bush administration firmly defended its use of the statements as lawful and appropriate, they generated a vigorous debate on Capitol Hill and in legal circles.
The American Bar Association passed a resolution urging Bush and future presidents not to "misuse" them to disregard laws, calling such statements "contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional separation of powers."
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs asserted yesterday that Obama will return to the traditional way the statements had been used "for two centuries in order for presidents to make known constitutional problems with ideas that are in legislation without necessarily dealing a veto to the entire piece of legislation."
"I think the previous administration issued hundreds and hundreds of signing statements that specifically entailed . . . that people disregard portions of legislation or the intent of Congress," Gibbs told reporters. "This president will use signing statements in order to go back to what has previously been done, and that is to enumerate constitutional problems . . . but not ask that laws be disallowed simply by executive fiat." 