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United States News Title: Feinstein accuses Bush of abusing presidential power Feinstein accuses Bush of abusing presidential power 'Signing statements' usurp authority of Congress, she says Sen. Dianne Feinstein accused President Bush of abusing his authority Tuesday by claiming the right to override hundreds of laws and by sweeping aside congressional attempts to regulate wiretapping. "The president is usurping power from both the legislative and the judicial branches and destroying this balance that has served our country so well,'' the Democratic lawmaker said at a dinner meeting of the Queen's Bench bar association in San Francisco. "I believe we are on our way to a most serious constitutional confrontation.'' Feinstein focused much of her criticism on Bush's use of presidential signing statements to interpret laws passed by Congress. More than 700 times since taking office in 2001, Bush has inserted statements into the Federal Register saying he was signing a law with the understanding that it could not restrict his authority to command the armed forces, conduct foreign policy, supervise the executive branch of government or exercise a variety of other constitutional powers. The White House has repeatedly said Bush is following precedents set by other administrations in this regard and is not exceeding his authority. But although presidents since Ronald Reagan have used signing statements as instruments of executive power, Bush has issued more than all past presidents combined and has made the most forceful claims of authority to disregard congressional views. In one case cited by Feinstein, Bush signed a military spending bill in December after agreeing to an amendment by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that would prohibit U.S. forces from engaging in "cruel, inhuman or degrading'' treatment of foreign prisoners. The president then issued a signing statement saying he would ignore the amendment if doing so were necessary to protect Americans from terrorism. Bush has issued similar statements disavowing laws that protected government whistle-blowers, requiring his administration to report to Congress on secret FBI seizures of library and business records, and allowing consideration of race and sex in awarding federal contracts. Legal scholars who have examined the signing statements have generally agreed that courts would give them little weight in interpreting a law or deciding whether it was constitutional. But the statements are seldom reviewed in court -- because private citizens can rarely show they have enough at stake to file a legal challenge -- and thus have often become the basis of government policy. "Through these statements President Bush is effectively saying that if he doesn't like a law, he won't carry it out,'' Feinstein said. She noted that Bush is on his way to becoming the first president since Thomas Jefferson never to veto a bill. Bush has instead used the signing statements as a "silent veto'' that Congress has no chance to override, Feinstein said. The senator also said Bush has claimed virtually absolute power to override both federal law and the Constitution as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. She cited the electronic surveillance program he ordered after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, authorizing the National Security Agency to intercept phone calls and e-mails between Americans and terror suspects abroad without court warrants required by a 1978 federal law. When the program was disclosed in December, Bush said he was acting within his constitutional authority to conduct the war on terror and that the surveillance program could not be regulated by Congress. That would mean, Feinstein said Tuesday, that "the president can do whatever he wants in the name of national security, without having to answer to the legislature or the judiciary.'' Feinstein is co-author of a bill that would make the 1978 warrant law more flexible for surveillance of suspected terrorists. She said that both Congress and the courts must reassert their authority to rein in presidential excesses. "It is my hope that someday soon, the courts will weigh in and say the administration is in fact doing wrong,'' she said.
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