Bush Signing Statements

[Mr. Blue]

Bush has only vetoed one bill and that just happened with the Stem Cell Research Bill. A lot of people think that he's under used his veto power, that somehow the lack of vetos makes him a paper pusher, but is this necessarily true?

Recent Presidents have used the veto power liberally, Regan and Clinton vetoed 78 bills each, George B, Sr. vetoed 44 bills, but GWB has only vetoed 1 bill. :eek:

The difference is that George W. Bush has used a thing called signing statements. Basically when a bill comes his way that he doesn't like, instead of killing the bill, he adds a little trailer to the bill that more or less makes it the way he wants it.

So, a lot of people were shocked he only vetoed one bill, but meanwhile Georgy has been shaping bills with the signing statement (over 500 of them) to more or less change the bills to his liking.

The American Bar Association is finally challenging these signing statements as going against the constitution.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,205205,00.html

Now is anyone shocked as to why he's only vetoed 1 bill? Why veto when you can just use signing statements to get what you want.

[Tickler]

I saw some news articles on that also. Everybody else has to obey the law, but, I'll do whatever I want.

It's like the internal spying stuff. The secret FISCA spy-court is supposed to OK the spying up to so long after the fact. They were apparently rejecting like 90% of the ones that were coming their way. So W. decided to FU, I'll do them under executive powers.

[Tommy]

its on Lou Dobbs right now

Lou says that signing statements have been used since the republic was formed

in that time up till 2000 us presidents have done it 600 times
but only to add a note on how they interpret the bill

Bush in the 6 years he has been president has used signing statements 800 times

and most of the time he uses it to add exceptions to laws for the executive branch
like with McCain's torture bill, he reserved the right to torture a terrorist if they believed it could prevent an attack

[SirMoby]

I'm glad that someone is finally pointing this out. The problem with having a congress that's controlled by Dubya is that no one there would go after this issue.

Dubya has used these statements to act like a dictator and not a leader of a democracy. I've always thought that Dubya and his family are the single worse thing to happen to the USA and if democracy finds a way to prevail 50 years from now, that's what the history books will say.

[Mr. Blue]

Most people don't even know about signing statements...recently I was discussing this topic with a friend, he was foaming at the mouth that Bush hadn't used his veto more, etc, and I was like...Signing Statements...and he just got this blank expression on his face.

It's good this is finally being brought out in the open.