Congress Questions White House's Use of Signing Statements

BY LAURIE KELLMAN - Associated Press
June 27, 2006
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/35129

WASHINGTON - The Senate Judiciary Committee is opening hearings this week into what has become the White House's favorite tool for overriding Congress in the name of wartime national security - signing statements.

"It's a challenge to the plain language of the Constitution," the committee's chairman, Senator Specter, a Republican of Pennsylvania, said in an interview with the Associated Press. "I'm interested to hear from the administration just what research they've done to lead them to the conclusion that they can cherry-pick."

Apparently, enough to challenge more than 750 statutes passed by Congress, far more than any other president, Mr. Specter's committee says.The White House does not dispute that number, but points out that Bush is far from the nation's first chief executive to issue them.