Legislation
Senator Vows Action on Signing Statements
Posted Jun 20, 2007, 08:40 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
A senator who sought a study on presidential signing statements says his next step will be to determine if there are any legal violations.
Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., told the New York Times he wanted to examine the broad impact of signing statements, in which the president expresses reservations about a law he signs and claims the power to disregard parts of it.
“Moving forward, I plan to ask auditors to take a look at these provisions and determine what legal violations they find,” he said.
Yesterday, the Government Accountability Office released a study of 19 laws signed by the president despite expressing reservations about the requirements. In six of the cases, the laws were not carried out as written.