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Text Box:         2001-2009


 

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Latest Signing Statement

List of All Signing Statements
2001-2008


Text of Signing Statements 
2001


Text of Signing Statements 
2002


Text of Signing Statements 
2003


Text of Signing Statements 
2004


Text of Signing Statements
2005


Text of Signing Statements 
2006


Text of Signing Statements 
2007


Text of Signing Statements 
2008

FAQs About Signing Statements

About This Website

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NEW ON THIS SITE

For a comprehensive list
of all signing statements issued by George W. Bush,
and the Congressional enactments to which the statements pertain, click below.

HTML VERSION

PDF VERSION

 



 


ABOUT THIS WEBSITE


 


 
 

 

SOURCES

 

EDITORIAL POLICY 

 

SELECTION OF DOCUMENTS

 

AUTHENTICATION OF GPO DOCUMENTS

 

NUMBERING FOR SIGNING STATEMENTS

 

SOURCE CITATIONS

 

UPDATES

 

TEXT OF LAWS REFERRED TO IN SIGNING STATEMENTS

 

HOW TO SEARCH THIS WEBSITE

 

COPYRIGHT

 

WHO MAINTAINS THIS WEBSITE, AND WHY?

 

MIRROR SITE

 

ERRORS AND SUGGESTIONS

 

MEDIA INQUIRIES


 

 

 

 

 

 




© Joyce A. Green, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009
 All rights reserved.

Absolutely no copyright is claimed in any of the signing statements, statutes, session laws, resolutions, court opinions, or other government-authored documents presented on this website. Click here to inquire about permission to reproduce, distribute, or alter materials of original authorship that appear on this website. I anticipate using Creative Commons licenses when granting permission to reproduce, distribute, or alter materials that I have authored. Click here to find out what materials on this site are of original authorship. Please respect the rights of other authors who have graciously given me permission to reproduce their copyrighted materials on this website. Such materials are marked as reproduced with permission of the rights-holders.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 




 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 


SOURCES 

This website provides the full text of each presidential signing statement from four sources:

(1)  it sets out (and fixes) the full text of each signing statement as published on the White House website;
(2)  it provides a link to the same statement at the White House website;
(3)  it provides a link to a plain text version of the same statement when it is published in the Government Printing Office's (GPO's) online version of the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents (WCPD); and
(4)  it provides PDF files of the statements, downloaded from the GPO's WCPD and stored on this website.

Multiple-sourcing is provided for two reasons. First, it helps readers verify the text of the signing statements. Second, the exact number of statements has been somewhat controversial. Providing documents from multiple official sources has helped end that controversy.


EDITORIAL POLICY

Typographical, grammatical, and textual errors in the HTML documents copied from the White House website have been reproduced exactly; no editorial corrections have been made. All materials in brackets -- [  ] -- have been added by the editor of this website or the GPO, not by the White House. The origin of all comments or notes - from the GPO or the editor of this website - is clearly identified.

There were a few obvious errors in the dates provided by the White House. In these documents, "[?]" has been added to note date inconsistencies. In all instances in which text and headings appear to be missing, they were missing from the White House website. If the GPO provided the missing text, it was added here with a bracketed note stating that the text came from the GPO.

Photographs and graphics that accompanied some of the statements on the White House website have been omitted.


SELECTION OF DOCUMENTS

Only documents that the GPO has expressly identified as bill signing statements have been included. Bill signing "remarks" are not included. Statements by the President commenting on, commending, applauding, or encouraging actions by Congress, or either chamber of it, are not included.  Executive Orders and Proclamations are not included, as they are distinct presidential documents with clearly defined legal import. Presidential remarks and speeches, and statements by the White House Press Secretary or other officials, are not included.

However, when documents such as presidential speeches, remarks, Executive Orders, or Statements of Administration Policy help elucidate a signing statement, those documents are presented in the annotations to the signing statements.


AUTHENTICATION OF GPO DOCUMENTS

Hundreds of the documents on this website, including signing statements and the public laws to which they apply, have been downloaded directly from the Government Printing Office (GPO) website, GPO Access. The GPO recently announced expanded implementation of its document authentication initiative, which applies "digital signatures to certain electronic documents on GPO Access that not only establish GPO as the trusted information disseminator, but also provide the assurance that an electronic document has not been altered since GPO disseminated it."

Since my mission is provide reliable text of the signing statements and the laws to which they apply, the GPO authentication initiative is a most welcome improvement.

Although I never alter any documents that I obtain from the GPO, I am working to replace older GPO documents on this website with the new digitally-signed documents. I can  replace a GPO document only if the GPO has issued an authenticated document. The GPO has already released digitally-signed PDF documents for the public laws of the 110th Congress.  However, please be aware that the GPO has not yet implemented digital signatures for the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents.

To access the newer, digitally-signed GPO documents, users of this website need to make sure that they are using version 7 or version 8 of the Adobe Acrobat reader.


NUMBERING FOR SIGNING STATEMENTS

Unlike Executive Orders and Proclamations, presidential signing statements are not numbered or indexed on the White House website. Nor are they grouped or labeled in a way that they can be easily accessed or identified. For this reason, I have created a numbering scheme for the signing statements, as follows: 

YYYY-NN

The first four numbers indicate the year in which the signing statement was issued. The last two numbers indicate the chronological order of issuance. Thus, 2005-17 is the 17th signing statement issued in 2005. These numbers are not official and are not provided by the White House or any government entity or publisher.


SOURCE CITATIONS

Signing statements appear in the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents (WCPD), issued by the GPO. I have provided WCPD citations in this format: 

        <Volume #> WCPD <page number> (<issue date>).

Example:        42 WCPD 425 (March 13, 2006)


UPDATES

Sources are checked daily. The website was last updated at 6:09 a.m. (Central) on January 30, 2009.


HOW TO SEARCH THIS WEBSITE

I have added a site-specific search box to this website but am still testing it. If you are dissatisified with the results of the new search feature, here's a fall-back approach to searching the contents of this website:

(1)  Open a new window or tab in your browser, and go to Google's main search page;

(2)  In the Google search box, type this:

site:www.coherentbabble.com

(3)  After this phrase, in the same search box, enter one space and add your search terms.

Example, with search terms highlighted: 

site:www.coherentbabble.com defense appropriations


TEXT OF LAWS REFERRED TO IN SIGNING STATEMENTS

Each signing statement refers to the bill or resolution that the president is signing. Laypersons often find it difficult to access the bills and resolutions, and this can make it difficult to understand the signing statements.

For instance, when signing H.R. 1815 (the "National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006"), the president stated:

"A number of provisions of the Act, including sections 905, 932, 1004, 1212, 1224, 1227, and 1304, call for the executive branch to furnish information to the Congress on various subjects. The executive branch shall construe such provisions in a manner consistent with the President's constitutional authority to withhold information the disclosure of which could impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative processes of the Executive, or the performance of the Executive's constitutional duties."  (emphasis added)

Obviously, one cannot understand this statement without seeing the text of §§ 905, 932, 1004, 1212, 1224, 1227, and 1304 of the Act. One can discern that the president has reserved the right to withhold information that Congress has said the executive branch must furnish. However, to see exactly what information Congress required of the Executive, one must read the Act.

Therefore, this website provides links to the full text of every Congressional enactment that is the subject of a signing statement. Readers may view these laws in PDF or plain text format by using the annotations for signing statements. Both the plain text and the PDF versions of the laws are from the GPO website. The plain text links take the reader directly to files residing on the GPO website. The PDF links take the reader to documents residing on this website; however all such files were downloaded -- without change -- directly from the GPO. In some cases, text of the laws has been excerpted and added to the annotations to aid in searching the webpage (e.g., a search for "Sarbanes-Oxley" on the annotated text page will locate the relevant signing statement by finding these words in text excerpted from the bill or resolution).

The annotations to the signing statements also provide public law numbers and session law citations for all bills and resolutions that are subjects of signing statements. These citations help researchers: (i) track the laws in codified statutes, and (ii) cite the laws. Public law numbers and session laws are cited in accordance with "The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (17th Ed. Columbia, Harvard, Pennsylvania, and Yale Law Reviews)." Session laws are cited to the United States Statutes at Large.


COPYRIGHT

The purpose of this webpage is to provide free convenient access -- for the entire world -- to verifiable text of George W. Bush's presidential signing statements and the laws to which they apply. No one needs permission to link to this site. No copyright, intellectual property, or other rights are claimed in any of the laws, signing statements, or other government-authored documents presented here. No one owns the law or presidential signing statements. Feel free to data mine or swipe the laws, signing statements, and other government documents.

However, there are four items of original authorship on this website: (i) the FAQs page; (ii) the entire page titled "About This Website;" (iii) the annotations following each signing statement; and (iv) the "News About Signing Statements" feature. You must have my prior express permission to reproduce, publish, post, or (especially) to modify these materials. For information about permission, click here. I am requiring permission for two reasons. First, some sites have reproduced this site in its entirety but made no effort to keep the materials up to date. Second, some sites that reproduced this site altered the materials without making it clear who was responsible for the alterations. I am glad that people want to make these statements available for free on the web and will assist those who wish to post the signing statements and laws. But I cannot allow other people's words to be attributed to me.

Please note, also, that this website houses a number of law review articles, audio files, and other materials with written permission from the authors and rights-holders. These individuals have been generous, and are allowing me to make these materials available to the public for free. Please respect these individuals' intellectual property rights. All such materials are clearly marked as being reproduced with permission of the owners. 


WHO MAINTAINS THIS WEBSITE, AND WHY?

My name is Joyce Green.  I have a BA in Political Science, an AB in International Studies, and a Juris Doctor. I have been licensed to practice law since 1988.  I first posted this website in May of 2006, when the media was just beginning to report about signing statements and scholarly writing about the statements was relatively scarce. 

I built the website for two reasons: (1) to provide free, convenient public access to the signing statements; and (2) to provide an objective, nonpartisan, and verifiable resource - a reliable research tool for reporters, scholars, lawyers, and anyone who is interested in signing statements. My purpose is not to guide opinion about signing statements, but to equip members of the public to explore the topic and form their own opinions.

The legal and political issues raised by signing statements are not partisan issues. Rather, they affect the presidency itself, regardless of who occupies the post. They affect the balance of power in American government and, thus, implicate the functioning of democracy itself. Therefore, on the links page, I collect all points of view that I can, across the political spectrum. 


MIRROR SITE

The law library at Pace University Law School in New York is now mirroring this site, with my permission. Like this website, the mirror site at Pace provides the signing statements and annotations to the general public at no charge. I am giving this website, and exclusive rights to the compilation, to Pace Law School. Pace will eventually take over the materials and this website will disappear. I will give notice before this happens, so that you can reset your bookmarks.


ERRORS AND SUGGESTIONS

Please do not hesitate to report problems with this website or make suggestions to improve it. I try to answer all email that I receive.


MEDIA INQUIRIES

All media inquiries should be directed to
this address.
 


 

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