By Jeremy Jacobs, The Hill
Democrats Monday blasted President Bush’s extensive use of signing statements, with Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) calling the practice a “power grab.”
Byrd and Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) criticized Bush after a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report revealed that President Bush has penned more signing statements objecting to the legality of laws than his predecessors and that federal agencies have, consequently, failed to execute those laws.
…The GAO report shows that the president has issued signing statements, documents in which the president may question the constitutionality of the law being signed, in 11 of 12 appropriations acts in fiscal 2006. The GAO also examined the execution of the law in 19 provisions on which Bush penned signing statements and found that federal agencies failed to follow the law in six of those cases, which amounts to over 30 percent.