Signing Statements, Executive orders, Executive Agreements Signing statements: –Signing statement is a pres. comment about legislation. It may support the legislation- (Clinton’s support of Family Leave Act Feb ) –“More boldly still, the President may declare in a signing statement that a provision of the bill before him is flatly unconstitutional, and that he will refuse to enforce it.”.(Pres Bush Jan 28, 2008)(Pres Bush Jan 28, 2008) –Pres Bush 1 st term had 505 const. challenges to laws

Executive Order List of EOs A rule or regulation issued by the president that has the effect of law. All executive orders must be published in the Federal Register. –Exec. Orders can be regulations or rules –See page 335 Congress and its Members –Federal register # of pages –1940 5,307 –198087,012 – ,293, –200280,332

Franklin D. Roosevelt3,522 Harry S. Truman907 Dwight D. Eisenhower484 John F. Kennedy214 Lyndon B. Johnson325 Richard Nixon346 Gerald R. Ford169 Jimmy Carter320 Ronald Reagan381 George Bush166 William J. Clinton364 George W. Bush291 Barack Obama144

Examples: C:\My Documents\AP Gov Presidency\executive order Clinton.htm Presidents can reverse orders from previous presidents. Reagan used executive order to stop federal funding of fetal tissue research and to end federal funding for any groups providing abortion counseling. Clinton reversed the order and George W. reversed Clinton’s reversal. Obama reversed W’s reverse reversal

Executive Orders President Truman ‘s order to desegregate military is a bold example – Obama closed Gitmo within a year –His aides are barred from lobbying any executive agency for the life of the Obama administration. That means an appointee who leaves the White House in, say, 2010 would be barred from lobbying the executive branch until 2017 if Obama were to serve two terms. LA Times Jan 22

Executive privilege: An assertion of presidential power that reasons that the president can withhold information requested by the courts in matters relating to his office – United States v Nixon 1974 Supreme Court ruled that there is no constitutional absolute executive privilege that would allow a president to refuse to comply with a court order to produce information needed in a criminal trial The result was that Nixon had to turn over documents an tapes

Executive Agreements Sabato 288 Formal government agreement entered into by the pres. That does NOT require Senate “advice and consent” of the Senate –Treaty vs exec agreement: Often these are secret or highly sensitive NOT binding to subsequent administrations NAFTA historic international pacts through the channel of executive agreements, among them, the destroyer-base deal with Great Britain in 1940, the Yalta and Potsdam agreements of 1945, the Vietnam peace agreement of 1973, and the Sinai agreements of 1975.