A new report from the U.S. House Armed Services Committee blasted President George W. Bush’s use of presidential signing statements as infringing on congressional oversight of national defense policy. Steven Aftergood reported on the Armed Services document for Secrecy News. The committee’s report concluded that the president’s signing statements have too often failed to provide specific objections to legislation. “The functionality of a signing statement is greatly reduced if it is too vague to identify the concerns of the President and the interpretation of the law that the President is trying to convey to the executive branch,” the committee report stated. The report noted that presidential signing statements can be used to proper effect, but that “signing statements may be a mechanism to expand executive authority at the expense of the legislature.”

Charlie Savage reported earlier this year for the Boston Globe on Bush’s assertion, made in a signing statement, that the president has the power to bypass provisions of laws passed by Congress.

Neil Kinkopf, a law professor at Georgia State University College of Law, helped create a comprehensive index of the president’s signing statements issued between 2001 – 2007. The document, available here, provides the provisions of legislation the administration tried to flag as objectionable. For more analysis of the administration’s use of signing statements, see Kinkopf’s ACS Issue Brief called “Signing Statements and the President’s Authority to Refuse to Enforce the Law.”

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