What do you think of Bush using “signing statements”?

Question by lip11: What do you think of Bush using “signing statements”?
Signing statements are memos that Bush uses when he signs a bill from Congress into law. He uses them for statutes comprising that law that he intends to ignore. In other words, he chooses which laws to abide by and which to break. If this isn’t illegal and a blatant violation of the Constitutional separation of powers, I don’t know what is.

An example was when congress sent a bill to him a while ago that clarified that torture of any type is illegal. He signed the rest of the bill, but crossed out the anti-torture statute.

He has done this about 750 times in his presidency.

(And please don’t tell us how bad Clinton was. I’m talking about Bush – he’s the president now. )
It’s amazing how Bush supporters will believe that anything this crook does is ok. Just because stealing or fraud is regular practice, does that make it legal? (I don’t want to hear about past presidents. If you want to talk about the general practice or how bad FDR was, ask a question yourself.)

And by the way, it is around 750, but even if it’s 500, what does that matter? Oh, I broke the law only 500 times, not 750, so there!
See
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2006/06/aba-to-investigate-bush-signing.php
It’s amazing how Bush supporters will believe that anything this crook does is ok. Just because stealing or killing is regular practice, does that make it legal? (I don’t want to hear about past presidents. If you want to talk about the general practice or how bad FDR was, ask a question yourself.)

And by the way, it is around 750, but even if it’s 500, what does that matter? Oh, I broke the law only 500 times, not 750, so there!

Best answer:

Answer by coragryph
It’s not a separation of powers issue, because the signing statements don’t actually change the law being signed. The courts have already addressed that issue.

All the signing statements do is act as a sort of executive history, recording the president’s interpretation of the law that Congress has just enacted. It’s basically his way of documenting that he doesn’t intend to obey the law.

I’ve seen various statistics, but our Commander-in-Sheik has used signing statements to effectively gut many many laws. At rough count, the first 200 years of the US saw 75 such declarations, mostly regarding interpretation not declaring the law impotent. Of the remainder, 75% have occurred during the current administration, most of which have in a nutshell said “this law does not apply to anything I choose to do”.

So, if you want to think of it as separation of powers, it’s the executive branch declaring it is above the laws. Which is at least consistent with the recent arguments that federal courts have no authority to review actions taken by any government agency at the direction of the tyrant. Sorry, I meant the president.

{Edit} It’s not that signing statements haven’t been used in the past. It’s the sheer volume and the tone taken by the current administration. Saying that it’s been commonly done and shouldn’t be a problem now is like comparing a handful of firecrackers on the 4th of July to continuous daily blasting in the quarry next door. Yes, both involve the same basic type of action, but the end result isn’t even comparable.

What do you think? Answer below!