US agencies disobey 6 laws that president challenged
Officials regarded some as advisory
By Charlie Savage
Boston Globe
WASHINGTON -- Federal officials have disobeyed at least six new laws that President Bush challenged in his signing statements, a government study disclosed yesterday. The report provides the first evidence that the government may have acted on claims by Bush that he can set aside laws under his executive powers.
In a report to Congress, the non partisan Government Accountability Office studied a small sample of the bill provisions that Bush has signed into law but also challenged with signing statements. The GAO found that agencies disobeyed six such laws, while enforcing 10 others as written even though Bush had challenged them.
House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers , Democrat of Michigan, said yesterday that the GAO's findings demonstrated a need for a more "extensive review" of how the government has followed up on hundreds of other laws challenged by Bush.
"The administration is thumbing its nose at the law," said Conyers, one of the lawmakers who commissioned the GAO study.
A signing statement is a legal document filed in the Federal Register the day a president signs a bill into law. It instructs the executive branch about how to implement the new statutes the bill creates, and sometimes it states that certain provisions are unconstitutional and need not be enforced as written.
Bush's signing statements have drawn fire because he has used them to challenge more than 1,100 sections of bills -- more than all previous presidents combined. The sample the GAO studied represents a small portion of the laws Bush has targeted, but its report concluded that sometimes the government has gone on to disobey those laws.
For example, one law requires the Customs and Border Patrol to relocate its illegal immigrant checkpoints near Tucson every seven days to prevent smugglers from being able to predict where they are, but the agency failed to do so. The border patrol told the GAO that the law is flawed because it "diverts resources," and it characterized the requirement as "advisory."
(Continued here.)
By Charlie Savage
Boston Globe
WASHINGTON -- Federal officials have disobeyed at least six new laws that President Bush challenged in his signing statements, a government study disclosed yesterday. The report provides the first evidence that the government may have acted on claims by Bush that he can set aside laws under his executive powers.
In a report to Congress, the non partisan Government Accountability Office studied a small sample of the bill provisions that Bush has signed into law but also challenged with signing statements. The GAO found that agencies disobeyed six such laws, while enforcing 10 others as written even though Bush had challenged them.
House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers , Democrat of Michigan, said yesterday that the GAO's findings demonstrated a need for a more "extensive review" of how the government has followed up on hundreds of other laws challenged by Bush.
"The administration is thumbing its nose at the law," said Conyers, one of the lawmakers who commissioned the GAO study.
A signing statement is a legal document filed in the Federal Register the day a president signs a bill into law. It instructs the executive branch about how to implement the new statutes the bill creates, and sometimes it states that certain provisions are unconstitutional and need not be enforced as written.
Bush's signing statements have drawn fire because he has used them to challenge more than 1,100 sections of bills -- more than all previous presidents combined. The sample the GAO studied represents a small portion of the laws Bush has targeted, but its report concluded that sometimes the government has gone on to disobey those laws.
For example, one law requires the Customs and Border Patrol to relocate its illegal immigrant checkpoints near Tucson every seven days to prevent smugglers from being able to predict where they are, but the agency failed to do so. The border patrol told the GAO that the law is flawed because it "diverts resources," and it characterized the requirement as "advisory."
(Continued here.)
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