House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is threatening to take President Bush to court if he issues a signing statement as a way of sidestepping a carefully crafted compromise Iraq war spending bill.
Pelosi recently told a group of liberal bloggers, "We can take the president to court" if he issues a signing statement, according to Kid Oakland, a blogger who covered Pelosi's remarks for the liberal website dailykos.com.
Mental giants within the administration speak with circular reason:The Hill
"The president has made excessive use of signing statements and Congress is considering ways to respond to this executive-branch overreaching," a spokesman for Pelosi, Nadeam Elshami, said. "Whether through the oversight or appropriations process or by enacting new legislation, the Democratic Congress will challenge the president’s non-enforcement of the laws."
It is a scenario for which few lawmakers have planned. Indicating that he may consider attaching a signing statement to a future supplemental spending measure, Bush last week wrote in his veto message, "This legislation is unconstitutional because it purports to direct the conduct of operations of the war in a way that infringes upon the powers vested in the presidency."
Note that the power of the purse is neither an "operation of war" nor an infringement upon executive privileges. If and when Mister Bush publishes in the Federal Register any EO or signing statement which alters the terms of legislation enacted concerning the period of funding military operations, he will have violated federal law. One would think avoiding jeopardy would not be an onerous task for a law abiding president.
So it appears clear that contentious debate over artifical timelines is not simply GOP campaign calculus.
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) introduced legislation to limit force of signing statements last year, but the idea of a lawsuit never gained traction in Congress.
Jurist
US Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) Wednesday introduced legislation [S 3731] that would give Congress the power to bring lawsuits in federal court [JURIST report] to challenge presidential bill signing statements [1993 DOJ backgrounder] the constitutionality of which is in question. President Bush has used the signing statements to bypass particular provisions that he considers unconstitutional, even though he has signed the bill that includes them - perhaps most notably a law that bans the torture of prisoners held by the US.
The text of S 3731 has not yet been received from GPO.
dlindorff has posted an opinion about the feasibility of Pelosi's "threat".
She cannot really do anything, because Bush will simply issue signing statements and use his claim of "unitary executive authority" to invalidate any legislation passed by Congress.
Pelosi needs to be told by her colleagues and by all Americans who care about the survival of the Constitution that this is not an issue for the courts. It is an issue that demands impeachment.
District court is the tooth and nail of Pelosi's "threat" and the proper forum for adjudicating the complaints of America's citizens. I want the idea and substance of a unitary executive IMPEACHED, and I don't care how we get there.