New Congress Misses Threat Of Bush

In her first 100 hours as Speaker of the United State House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, D-California, had all sorts of wondrous accomplishments lined up. "I am grateful to my colleagues for electing me Speaker of The House and I take the needs of America’s working families seriously. In the first 100 hours of the 110th Congress, we will pass the elements of our "Six for ‘06" agenda to meet the everyday needs of all Americans."

Here are the most important things for Democrats:

- We will make America safer by implementing the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

- We will make our economy fairer by raising the minimum wage.

- We will promote stem cell research to offer hope to the millions of American families who suffer from devastating diseases.

- We will improve health care by requiring Medicare to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices.

- We will make college more affordable by cutting the interest rates on student loans.

- We will take the first step toward achieving energy independence by repealing subsidies to Big Oil and investing the savings in renewable energy.

Marvelous goals, all very Democratic, just the sort of work the citizens of America expected from a group of politicians who last held the House of Representatives and the Senate a dozen years ago. Liberty laws coming through. The Democrats are flexing their majority muscles.

Ohhhh, this is going to be a charge right into the heart of the ultra-right Republican Party, a stab at the heart of Republican George W. Bush. He has had Americans marching to his own heartbeat for six years now, demanding war and victory and ignoring many of the issues near to the Democrats’ very soul.

But before Democrats start rubbing their hands in glee, there are still some very serious problems that they have not addressed in the first 100 hours. There is the slim edge Democrats have over in the Senate, where Sen. Tim Johnson, D-South Dakota, is hospitalized with a stroke. He apparently is going to survive. But the line is paper thin. If he were to die, South Dakota’s Republican governor would appoint a new senator, a Republican. That would change the balance in favor of the GOP once again.

Yet even more troublesome during the next two years, while Bush holds the presidency, is the apparent presidential power to change any and all laws passed by Congress. The so-called "Signing statements" are the problem. Some other presidents have used them.

Until Ronald Reagan became President, only 75 such statements had been issued. Reagan and his successors George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton have produced 247 signing statements among the three of them. By the end of 2004, George W. Bush had issued over 108 signing statements containing more than 505 constitutional challenges. As of October 4, 2006, he had signed 134 signing statements challenging 810 federal laws, according to Wikipedia, the free internet encyclopedia.

And this trend has obviously been going on since 1981. It has included three Republican presidents and a Democrat. All alone, without any other executive powers, this practice takes all power out of legislative hands. That’s right: All of it is summarily ripped from Senators and Congressmen.

How can that be?

In a "signing statement" the president signs a law into the nation’s books and then, secretly, removes the pieces of the law that the president chooses to ignore by stipulating he is not recognizing those elements. That is it.

In our grammar school history and civics courses all of us learned that amendments are the way to overturn any controversial legislation. If the president does not like a bill or part of a bill, he throws it back to the House and Senate to be voted again, with two-thirds of the House needed to override the president. Tall order, that.

Even with the cards stacked in his favor due to a GOP majority in Congress, Bush the Lesser vetoed just one bill in his whole tenure to date.

One.

It was a stem cell bill. He voted against it. Apparently, Bush had no problem telling the world how he felt about stem cell research.

However, in all other areas he apparently did not want to blatantly snub the two legislative branches, so he has used these "signing statements," which were originally designed – as a creation of the executive branch that has not been Constitutionally challenged – to allow the president to point out elements of new legislation that he felt would not pass muster in the court system, thereby allowing the legislation to become law while pointing to problem areas that needed further resolution. Mr. Bush, however, has stretched this initially reasonable executive technique to imply that elements of the law enumerated in signing statements are essentially excluded from the law, particularly as they relate to the president and the executive branch.

Thus far George Bush has avoided a Supreme Court review, so there is no check or balance on the president; he can in effect make law unilaterally by determining what will or won’t apply to him.

Well, so what?

This is the key question here: so what. The way the founding fathers set things up, the president/executive branch was one part of three governing entities, the other two being the legislators and the judges; i.e., the legislative and the judicial branches. All three had power to balance against each other, so no one branch could go off on a wild tangent and get the country in trouble.

Of course if there was a major crisis, everybody knew the president as commander and chief of all the armed forces would answer in any armed conflict or national crisis situation involving the use of force. That piece of the puzzle has always been a problem. Just when does the immediate danger abate and allow all three branches get back to balancing each other?

According to George W. Bush, America stays in the must-fight readiness mode forever.

Yes, forever: Bush wants to do away with worldwide terrorism for once and for all. Just in the way Bush phrases this, it means Americans fight anyone, anywhere who espouses any thinking out of line with United States (as defined by Washington) dogma.

Brilliant: A formula for permanent executive branch dominance.

Bush has whisked the rug out from legislators; we are at war in perpetuity.

And simultaneously he packs the judicial system, and the Supreme Court, with more and more ultra conservatives, helping to assure that no serious challenges will face him or the GOP’s right-wing philosophy of government.

If he were fighting a war against the legislature and judiciary, this would be textbook maneuvering: block the legislature and buy out the judiciary. Only he is not supposed to overcome those American institutions, he is supposed to look to them for guidance. Obviously, this president wants none. He wants them to shut up.

But while he enjoyed such acquiescence for years with a Republican controlled House and Senate, that silence has stopped because Democrats won an election. Oh, Bush is not the fearless president he was before the Nov. 6, 2006 election when Democrats took the reigns in the House and Senate. Before that date the House and Senate were overwhelmingly Republican and guess what; the Republican legislators were the ones Bush pulled the "signing statements" on. Bush had both houses and still did not trust them.

Logically, he will make use of this "signing statement" weapon again and again in his last two years. Naturally he will have more need of "signing statements" as Democrats try to enact laws that contradict his reactionary philosophy.

Democrats can pass whatever they like and stand victorious over Bush as he signs bill after bill. But the Democrats will have to watch for the silent "signing statement" after every bill. This item was what Pelosi should have put at the top of the 100 hours priorities. After all, she talks glowingly about what Congress will do with the bills they pass. But currently Bush can kill or neuter anything he likes with a "signing statement." It does not matter how many House Democrats are willing to vote to overturn a veto; the "signing statement" is not a veto.

Bush, as a chess player might, chortles: Check! You lose.

February, 2007