ChangeWatch

Y’know, that whole "signing statement" thing wasn’t apparently so bad after all.  So says one man who used to decry the use of it.

Congressional Democrats warned President Barack Obama on Tuesday that he sounded too much like George W. Bush when he declared this summer that the White House can ignore legislation he thinks oversteps the Constitution.

In a letter to the president, four senior House members said they were "surprised" and "chagrined" by Obama’s statement in June accompanying a war spending bill that he would ignore restrictions placed on aid provided to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Obama said he wouldn’t allow the provisions to interfere with his authority as president to conduct foreign policy and negotiate with other governments.

The rebuff was reminiscent of Bush, who issued a record number of "signing statements" while in office. The statements put Congress on notice that the administration didn’t feel compelled to comply with provisions of legislation that it felt challenged the president’s authority as commander in chief.

See, it’s not that it’s a bad thing in and of itself.  It’s just that it sounds so much like…well, you know.

"During the previous administration, all of us were critical of the president’s assertion that he could pick and choose which aspects of congressional statutes he was required to enforce," the lawmakers wrote. "We were therefore chagrined to see you appear to express a similar attitude."

Let’s see if this matters to him.

Filed under: Democrats • Government • Politics

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