Editorial: Imperial presidency is alive

Wednesday, May 3, 2006 | 7:39 a.m.

President Bush has undermined Congress and the courts by quietly issuing "signing statements" with more than 750 bills he has signed into law. The statements are official documents asserting that the bills, or parts of them, conflict with Bush's own interpretation of the Constitution.

The Constitution directs presidents to execute laws, but in these 750 cases, as The Boston Globe reported Sunday in an in-depth story on this little-known practice, Bush's statements signal he may instead disobey them. The statements are important because they are issued to the federal bureaucracy and willfully say: Just ignore Congress.

This president has used the signing statements in an unprecedented effort to ignore a wide variety of laws: affirmative action measures, congressional notifications about immigration service problems and whistle-blower protections, the Globe reported. Bush also has ignored laws that require congressional notification of funding for secretive military operations, such as overseas terrorist prisons.

Bush has used the signing statements more aggressively than previous presidents, the Globe noted. For instance, during the four years of the first President Bush's term, 232 laws had signing statements attached to them. President Clinton, during his eight years in office, was even more judicious - only 140 laws had signing statements.

If the previous occupants of the White House had serious constitutional reservations, they usually did the right thing - they simply vetoed the legislation, giving Congress the option of overriding their decision. Rather than using his veto power and risking an override by Congress, Bush prefers the coward's way, issuing signing statements so that he can claim legal standing if he is challenged for decisions that seem to go against Congress' intent.

In some cases, Bush is ignoring bill provisions that were the result of careful negotiation and compromise. Former White House aides said that in many cases Bush was merely asserting that he believes certain laws infringe on his power, adding that Bush is not necessarily ignoring them all.

But he is ignoring some of them - and that should scare us. Bush has demonstrated that he is quite comfortable ignoring laws, as he did when he ordered illegal wiretapping of some Americans' phones.

With the signing statements, Bush is seizing power from the law-writing Congress (our representatives) and the courts. Judges - not Bush - are responsible for reviewing laws for constitutionality. The use of signing statements is further chilling evidence that Bush seeks to expand White House power and shrink the other two branches of government.

A president who understood the importance of checks and balances would refrain from usurping power, but Bush is demonstrating that he is not bashful about trying to create an "imperial presidency" to rival that of Richard Nixon's.