A Signing Statement, Congress, and the Agencies
Obama issues a signing statement for the Omnibus bill that appears to give agencies a fair amount of latitude on how they spend the money that's coming to them. Most importantly, they're allowed to treat the opinions of Congressional committees as advisory when they spend or reallocate the funds. Relevant portion of the signing statement is here:
Legislative Aggrandizements (committee-approval requirements). Numerous provisions of the legislation purport to condition the authority of officers to spend or reallocate funds on the approval of congressional committees. These are impermissible forms of legislative aggrandizement in the execution of the laws other than by enactment of statutes. Therefore, although my Administration will notify the relevant committees before taking the specified actions, and will accord the recommendations of such committees all appropriate and serious consideration, spending decisions shall not be treated as dependent on the approval of congressional committees. Likewise, one other provision gives congressional committees the power to establish guidelines for funding costs associated with implementing security improvements to buildings. Executive officials shall treat such guidelines as advisory. Yet another provision requires the Secretary of the Treasury to accede to all requests of a Board of Trustees that contains congressional representatives. The Secretary shall treat such requests as nonbinding.
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Government Executive Editor in Chief Tom Shoop, along with other editors and staff correspondents, take a fresh look at news affecting the management and operations of the federal bureaucracy.
I'm waiting for all the neo-communists to speak out now about BO's signing statements
dan ketter Posted Thursday, March 12, 2009 3:14 AMHere we go again.
If what the Congress has inserted in a bill is un-Constitutional, the President has the responsibility to oppose it, but he doesn't have the right to ignore it! If it's not Constitutional, let him take it to the Supremes and get a ruling.
Instead, he's following Bush's lead now and declaring in his signing statement which parts of the law enacted by the Congress he will follow. This was wrong for Bush; it's also wrong for Obama.
WHY is it that we can't seem to even conduct basic government correctly any longer??? To quote Casey Stengal: Can't anybody here play this game?
truly_frustrated Posted Thursday, March 12, 2009 5:49 AMI think this is refreshing. At least no one had to beat up the WH to give this out, it's been openly presented for all to cuss and discuss instead of having it "revealed" with a shock that such things exist. Not that the former administration would be embarrassed by anything they did, but info on signing statements from them came out like teeth being pulled.
AF HR Posted Thursday, March 12, 2009 3:32 PM