Signing Statements Erode Constitutional Balance
by Rep. Ron Paul Recently, the General Accounting Office studied nineteen instances where the President issued so-called “signing statements.†In such statements, the President essentially begins the process of interpreting legislation – up to and including declaring provisions unconstitutional—hence often refusing to enforce them. The GAO study found that in nearly 1/3 of the cases [...]
The Signing Statement Dictatorship
There’s been some attention of late on the aggressive use of “signing statements” by the executive branch. As the Boston Globe reported: Bush has claimed that his executive powers allow him to bypass more than 1,100 laws enacted since he took office. But administration officials insist that Bush’s signing statements merely question the laws’ constitutionality, [...]
