Obama Issues First Signing Statement
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in Barack, Congress, LegislationWhile President Obama has often criticized his predecessor’s frequent use of signing statements meant to alter the effect of new laws, our new president didn’t take long to issue a signing statement of his own, tacking one onto the spending bill he signed today.
[In the signing statement,] he objected to provisions of the bill that he said the Justice Department had advised “raise constitutional concerns.” Among them are provisions that Obama said would “unduly interfere” with his authority in the foreign affairs arena by directing him how to proceed, or not to, in negotiations and discussions with international organizations and foreign governments.
Another provision, Obama said, would limit his discretion to choose who performs specific functions in military missions.
Many Presidents have used signing statements in lieu of an all-out veto, presumably because vetoes come with a political price and, in the case of omnibus bills, would throw out the good with the bad. Nevertheless, this signing statement is yet more proof that Obama has yet to get the reins on Congress. Not only did the president feel as if he couldn’t take a stand on earmarks, he apparently lacked the clout to keep congress from meddling in executive powers pertaining to foreign affairs and military operations.
I won’t be so silly as to ask what foreign affairs provisions were doing in a spending bill (those things are a nasty stew), but I don’t think it would have been too much for the president to ask congressional leaders of his own party to eliminate the provisions before sending the bill his way. A signing statement hardly fulfills Obama’s desire to lead a government where the branches work better together. Let’s hope Obama doesn’t feel the need to make a habit out of signing statements.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 and is filed under Barack, Congress, Legislation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 11th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Alan, after reading your post, my first thought was….’change’. But, perhaps maybe we should file this the the ‘yes we can’ column. “Can we use signing statements even though we won an election deriding them? – Yes we can.”
thanks for keeping your eyes open.
March 12th, 2009 at 5:16 am
The whole bill was held over from last year – yesterday was the very last day of financing for the Federal government. If it hadn’t been signed the government would have actually shut down today. Most of the provisions in that bill were cobbled together in mid to late 2008 and the voting was postponed month after month until the new administration was elected, seated, and sworn in. This is not an Obama spending bill, this isn’t even a spending bill from the current congress – it was all a hold over. So give it a rest and give the new administration some slack when it comes to cleaning up the last 8 years of brutal incompetence. If this crap is still going on a year from now i will be as vocal as anyone – but right now is just too early.
March 12th, 2009 at 7:19 am
[...] Mr Obama spoke critically of Mr Bush’s use of signing statements calling them an abuse of power … waits less than 2 months to follow suit. [...]
March 12th, 2009 at 7:53 am
I’ve never been troubled by signing statements as a matter of any sort of abstract principle. In fact, they make a lot of sense to me. Presidents routinely sign bills that are pages and pages long, and these obviously must include things that are poorly written and fail to indicate their precise meaning.
So it makes perfect sense to me that a President would accompany his signature with a statement that describes what it is that he believes he is agreeing to, in good faith.
And that’s what it boils down to, good faith. A President’s signing statement needs to be in good faith and not be a blatant end around that turns clear meaning on its head. These things shouldn’t say “on p 57, section 3, subpara 5, I interpret black to mean white.” But if they say “I interpret this clause to proscribe activities a, b, and c, but not to address activities such as d and e, then I am 100% fine with that.
Fact is, progressives operated on the working hypothesis that the majority of GWB’s actions were in bad faith, and that his signing statements were undertaken primarily to subvert congressional intent. Since popular politics thrives on oversimplification, progressive objections were dumbed down to rote opposition to signing statements.
Fact is, they make sense.