Last week President Bush appended “signing statements” to two pieces of what seemed to be noncontroversial legislation passed by Congress. Signing statements are attached to legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by the president and, in the past, have been used by the White House to explain particular points of the new laws.

During the Bush administration, however, these documents have taken on a much more important role. The present administration has appended hundreds of signing statements to legislation signed into law by the president in which the president expresses disapproval of the laws he has signed and, in some cases, explicitly states that he will not enforce all or part of the new law.

This innovative use of signing statements has been condemned by many members of Congress and by legal experts as an inappropriate and illegal expansion of presidential power. At the very least this use of signing statements seems to many to be logically inconsistent. Why should the president sign into law legislation he believes to be unconstitutional and which he refuses to enforce?

On a practical level, the new use of signing statements to eviscerate laws is taken by many as a clear sign of the president’s unwillingness to respect Congress’ legislative power. Even more serious, of course, is that under our form of government Congress and the courts have no enforcement power. Such power resides exclusively in the executive branch of which the president is the head. If the president refuses to enforce a law, then the law is pointless. In essence, the current use of signing statements is a direct attack on separation of powers in the national government.

Whether one agrees in general with the president’s current use of signing statements, the two signing statements appended to last week’s legislation are, to my mind, very worrisome. The first was attached to legislation designed to ensure that reports prepared by the privacy office of the Department of Homeland Security will be sent to Congress without alteration. This guaranteed that Congress would have honest and complete analyses of homeland security activities so that it can exercise its mandated oversight function.

The president stated last week in a signing statement that he would not obey this law as enacted and that he reserved the right to edit, alter and otherwise modify reports before they were submitted to Congress. How can Congress do its job if the president refuses to provide it with full and complete information?

The second signing statement is, to my mind, even more troublesome. In the wake of the scandalously poor governmental response to Katrina last year Congress passed legislation setting minimum standards for the appointment of new FEMA directors. The congressional legislation required that any nominee for the FEMA directorship must have “demonstrated ability and knowledge of emergency management” and at least “five years experience” in the field.

According to the Washington Post, however, the president apparently disagrees with this legislation and stated in a signing letter that he would “interpret the section ‘in a manner consistent with the President’s constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch.'” The fact that the standards set by Congress seem so reasonable and the appointment so crucial to the public welfare makes one ask why the president felt the need to attach this statement at all. Does this mean that he thinks it would be appropriate to continue to appoint directors without either training or experience? Are we never to feel secure? It does make me wonder.