Friday, June 22, 2007

Lawmakers to Investigate Signing Statements

A little over year after the story of Bush's use of signing statements broke and about 6 months after the Democrats took over Congress, they finally seem ready to do something about it.

The GAO found that in 6 out of 19 cases the administration didn't follow the law. "The accountability office, a watchdog agency, in a report issued Monday, did not pass judgment on whether the agencies were responding to the signing statements or whether the president had the constitutional authority not to comply. But Congressional officials said Tuesday that the findings were alarming since the administration had apparently not complied with the law in 30 percent of the cases scrutinized."

Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) "said their next step would be to explore the signing statements to determine the broad extent of their impact." Well maybe "do something" was a bit strong.

No comments: