Last week the president issued a signing statement that indicated he would abide by the congressional ban on funds for transfers of Gitmo detainees to the U.S. for trial, even though he said it "undermines our Nation's counterterrorism efforts and has the potential to harm our national security.” He also said he would refuse to follow Congress attempt to defund presidential advisers or "czars," because "has well-established authority to supervise and oversee the executive branch, and to obtain advice in furtherance of this supervisory authority."
Both the number of "czars" in the Obama administration, and the provision defunding them, are a symptom of conservatives' tendency to fixate on rather meaningless “power grabs” at the expense of genuinely disturbing examples of expanding executive authority—such as the president’s claimed authority to kill American citizens suspected of terrorism abroad without trial. Setting aside the question of Obama's inconsistency on signing statements however, which I'll get to in another post, the logic of when the president decides to defy the Congress is curious to me. Bush used the signing statement as an end-run around the veto--the proper thing to do when a president is confronted with unconstitutional legislation is veto it, not simply say you won't follow the law. But Obama seems to be saying that he's willing to follow the law when it undermines national security, but not when it would make the administration of the executive branch logistically frustrating.
Previously, the administration could have argued that they were trying to abide by the limits of presidential power Obama said he would adhere to as a candidate. But since they're openly defying the will of Congress in another section of the statement, it's difficult to reconcile the willingness to suffer the Gitmo ban with fidelity to that promise. Rather, it sends the message that the Gitmo ban doesn't undermine national security, because if it did, the president would see the matter as important enough to veto the bill--or at least to give it the same treatment he did the provision on czars.
It's possible the administration simply thinks the Gitmo ban is constitutional while the ban on czars isn't, although the signing statement would still represent a broken promise anyway if that were the case. It seems fair to conclude though, based on the administration's own actions, that the ban just isn't as important to them as they want us to think it is. As Ben Wittes has written, it's difficult to believe the Obama administration sees closing Gitmo "as a national security imperative if it’s not prepared to wield the powers of the presidency to close it." In last week's signing statement, we have a rather vivid example not just of the administration's views of executive power, but on its genuine, as opposed to stated, priorities.
I'm not saying the administration should have defied the Gitmo ban with a signing statement. What I'm saying is that what laws they choose to defy in this fashion says something about what they think is important.
