His Name On the Line
President Barack Obama told reporters yesterday that when it came to signing statements, the written addenda that presidents sometimes attach to bills when signing them into law, his administration would be characterized by a markedly different approach from the one taken by George W. Bush, whose signing statements expressed about twelve hundred challenges to various laws -- more than the total number of signing-statement challenges recorded by all previous presidents combined.
Obama announced that he would employ signing statements "with caution and restraint," using them to censure sections and passages of legislation that could violate the Constitution, and that his decisions would be "based only on interpretations of the Constitution that are well-founded."
It can be hard to predict the practical consequences of a signing statement. They are most often used as a way for a president to express reservations about a law, or to offer a personal interpretation of how it should be enacted. Depending on a number of factors, including the nature of the bill and the amount of political capital the president holds, a signing statement can amount to little more than a formality, or it can have a significant impact on the way a law is enforced in day-to-day life.
Reaction to the president's statement has been mixed. Many Democrats are dismayed that Obama hasn't forsworn signing statements entirely, something John McCain promised, during last year's campaign, that he would do if elected. "The president shouldn't be asserting... wholesale objections to entire sections of statutes and claiming some kind of presidential authority to ignore them," said Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union.
The past few days have been particularly charged for Obama's base. The recently announced plan for Iraqi withdrawal left a bad taste in some mouths, since it calls for an extended American military presence in Iraq after combat operations are scheduled to cease; meanwhile, the repeal of Bush administration bans on federal funding for stem cell research has produced a good deal of relieved elation on the left.
H. Thomas Wells, Jr., president of the American Bar Association, told The Washington Post that the jury is still out on whether Obama's announcement portends a genuine break from the past. "The proof is going to be in the pudding," Wells said, "when we see his first presidential signing statement and how many times he uses it."
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