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Bush Trying to Sidestep Congress on Permanent Bases Question
By Elana Schor
The Guardian Unlimited UK
Tuesday 29 January 2008
"Signing statement" attached to new defence bill seeks to reserve the right to build bases in Iraq.
George Bush has resumed his practice of disregarding portions of new laws,
quietly reserving the right to build permanent military bases in Iraq, keep
Congress in the dark on spying activity and block two accountability measures
aimed at private security firms accused of wartime abuses.
As he signed a defence bill into law yesterday, Bush quietly added a "signing
statement" that asserts his ability to ignore several parts of the measure.
The signing statement is not a new tactic for Bush - he has issued hundreds
during seven years in office, many more than his predecessors - but Democrats
now are planning restraints on the presidential prerogative.
The fracas over the statements started when Bush used one to open a loophole
in a 2005 ban on inhumane treatment of US detainees, creating potential for
torture at the Guantanamo Bay prison. Bush's predilection for politically provocative
signing statements has since been especially alarming to both legal scholars
and the Democratic majority in Congress.
Bush's attempt this week to sidestep the permanent bases law, which aims to
stop him from creating an indefinite US military presence in Iraq, may become
as controversial as the signing statement sidestepping the torture ban. Such
bases are broadly unpopular with Iraqis, who have voiced fears of an ongoing
US occupation, and Bush's political opponents are suspicious of the administration's
intentions along similar lines. Defence secretary Robert Gates this week continued
the Bush administration's serial denials of any plans to build permanent bases.
The new defence bill would prohibit the Pentagon from using any of this year's
budget on base construction in principle, although it does not appropriate or
withhold actual funds from such a project.
"President Bush seems to forget that Congress is a co-equal branch of
government, not a body whose decisions he can simply dismiss out of hand when
he finds them inconvenient," Democratic congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, who
has led the push to prevent lasting bases in Iraq, said through a spokesman.
"With this most recent signing [statement] the president is also sending
a dangerous signal to the people of Iraq that the US has a long-term interest
in occupying their country, a move that will only enflame the insurgency,"
Woolsey added.
Mark Agrast, a member of the American Bar Association's task force on signing
statements, said the limit on permanent bases is the most serious of the four
laws that Bush claimed freedom to nullify this week.
"On the merits, for the president to assert that Congress lacks the authority
to say there shouldn't be permanent bases on foreign soil is fanciful at best,"
said Agrast, also a senior fellow at the Centre for American Progress.
The other three defence provisions singled out by Bush are equally alarming
to members of Congress and outside experts. The two new programmes for security
contractors gained momentum amid revelations of widespread improper and violent
episodes involving employees of Blackwater as well as other private firms operating
in Iraq.
Bush asserted the ability to disregard a new contracting commission created
to help the US military navigate the challenge of relying on private companies
to perform essential jobs. Modelled on a similar defence commission formed after
World War II, the effort received unanimous support from both Democratic and
Republican senators.
The Pentagon's inspector general, whose office conducts internal investigations,
also endorsed the commission, telling its Democratic authors in a November meeting:
"We're leaning forward in the saddle, we're committed to this."
The president appears less committed, however. Bush said in his signing statement
that the commission "could inhibit the president's ability to carry out
his constitutional obligations to take care that the laws be faithfully executed,
to protect national security, to supervise the executive branch and to execute
his authority as commander-in-chief".
Democratic senator Jon Tester, a long-time advocate of the commission, blasted
Bush for trying to circumvent a law that was drafted to save taxpayers money.
"There's no gray area here," Tester said. "The idea that the
president would stand in the way of a non-partisan, independent committee to
look into waste and fraud by companies like Blackwater and Halliburton in Iraq
is inexcusable and it's irresponsible, and it ought to ruffle a lot of feathers
across the country."
Bush's statement also seeks to open a loophole in new protections for contractors
who blow the whistle on fiscal or criminal abuses committed by their employers.
This legal shield against reprisals was co-written by a senior Republican,
Maine senator Susan Collins. "This [provision] closes a troubling loophole
in the laws that protect whistleblowers from retaliation," Collins said
in a statement celebrating congressional approval of the protections she crafted.
Despite the potential blow to whistleblower rights, at least one advocate in
Washington is hardly cowed by the Bush statement.
"Bush has threatened to veto or promised not to obey every whistleblower
rights law that has been proposed or adopted during his administration,"
Tom Devine, legal director at the non-profit Government Accountability Project,
said.
"The president doesn't have the authority to cancel these rights,"
Devine added, "unless he sends in troops to stop a jury from hearing whistleblower
cases".
In fact, signing statements do not necessarily cancel out laws unless government
agencies heed the president's will before that of Congress. In an independent
study last month of 11 Bush signing statements, the government accountability
office found that more than half of the laws were being implemented despite
challenges from the president.
"[W]e cannot conclude that agency non-compliance was the result of the
president's signing statements," the study's authors wrote.
Democratic senator Carl Levin reminded Bush today that the White House is obliged
to obey the new laws no matter what rights his new signing statement alleges.
One of the rules that Bush targeted required that spy agencies respond to document
requests from the armed services committee - which is headed by Levin.
"I understand that the president's statement did not say that these specific
provisions or any other provisions [of the defence bill] are unlawful, nor that
the executive branch would not implement these provisions," Levin said.
"Nevertheless, I believe it is important ... to express the view that
Congress has a right to expect that the administration will faithfully implement
all of the provisions of the [defence bill], not just the ones he happens to
agree with," he added.
Democratic senator James Webb, who led the push for the contracting commission,
also declared today that he would press ahead with the panel regardless of Bush's
opposition.
Two Republican senators have joined more than 60 Democrats in both houses of
Congress to draft bills that prohibit US courts from using presidential signing
statements to interpret laws. Those proposals have received hearings but not
yet come to a vote.
In addition to that legislation, Agrast advised both parties in Congress to
continue to "keep a close eye" on how agencies treat signing statements.
"They can function as a directive to civil service appointees to not comply
with congressional directives," Agrast said. "That acquiescence is
a serious danger and has not been fully investigated."
Go to Original
The Fine Print
The New York Times | Editorial
Wednesday 30 January 2008
With President Bush, you always have to read the footnotes.
Just before Monday night's State of the Union speech, in which Mr. Bush
extolled bipartisanship, railed against government excesses and promised to
bring the troops home as soon as it's safe to withdraw, the White House
undermined all of those sentiments with the latest of the president's
infamous signing statements.
The signing statements are documents that earlier presidents generally used
to trumpet their pleasure at signing a law, or to explain how it would be enforced.
More than any of his predecessors, the current chief executive has used the
pronouncements in a passive-aggressive way to undermine the power of Congress.
Over the last seven years, Mr. Bush has issued hundreds of these insidious
documents declaring that he had no intention of obeying a law that he had just
signed. This is not just constitutional theory. Remember the detainee treatment
act, which Mr. Bush signed and then proceeded to ignore, as he told C.I.A. interrogators
that they could go on mistreating detainees?
This week's statement was attached to the military budget bill, which
covers everything except the direct cost of the war. The bill included four
important provisions that Mr. Bush decided he will enforce only if he wants
to.
The president said they impinged on his constitutional powers. We asked the
White House to explain that claim, but got no answer, so we'll do our
best to figure it out.
The first provision created a commission to determine how reliant the government
is on contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, how much waste, fraud and abuse has
occurred and what has been done to hold accountable those who are responsible.
Congress authorized the commission to compel government officials to testify.
Perhaps this violated Mr. Bush's sense of his power to dole out contracts
as he sees fit and to hold contractors harmless. The same theory applies to
the second provision that Mr. Bush said he would not obey: a new law providing
protection against reprisal to those who expose waste, fraud or abuse in wartime
contracts.
The third measure Mr. Bush rejected requires intelligence officials to respond
to a request for documents from the Armed Services Committees of Congress within
45 days, either by producing the documents or explaining why they are being
withheld. Clearly, this violates the power that Mr. Bush has given himself to
cover up an array of illegal and improper actions, like his decisions to spy
on Americans without a warrant, to torture prisoners in violation of the Geneva
Conventions and to fire United States attorneys apparently for political reasons.
It's glaringly obvious why Mr. Bush rejected the fourth provision, which
states that none of the money authorized for military purposes may be used to
establish permanent military bases in Iraq.
It is more evidence, as if any were needed, that Mr. Bush never intended to
end this war, and that he still views it as the prelude to an unceasing American
military presence in Iraq.
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