Markey and Frank to Prepare Resolution Condemning Bush Administration Ignoring Laws

MARKEY AND FRANK TO PREPARE RESOLUTION CONDEMNING BUSH ADMINISTRATION IGNORING LAWS

Congressmen Ed Markey and Barney Frank announced today that they are preparing a resolution to be introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives to counter the "alarming pattern of Bush Administration actions blatantly and deliberately violating the fundamental constitutional principle of the right of Congress to make the laws of this country."

A recent survey by the Boston Globe demonstrated that the practice of the Bush Administration of simply ignoring acts of Congress with which the Administration disagrees has been even more widespread than most observers had realized.

In announcing the resolution, Markey and Frank made the following statement:

"We were aware of some instances of the Bush Administration unconstitutionally announcing its right to ignore duly passed laws, but the magnitude of this pattern of violations had not previously been clear. It is essential that Congress emphatically state our disapproval of this behavior and to do whatever we can constitutionally to reassert the primacy of the Constitution's allocation of powers to the various branches.

"Given the standing requirement of the U.S. Constitution for lawsuits, and the doctrine that has been developed by the U.S. Supreme Court over the years with regard to executive-legislative disputes, it is not always easy to get a judicial settlement of these issues, even where executive abuse of the Constitution is clear-cut. But this does not mean that Congress is helpless, nor that it should act as if we are. We will therefore be introducing a resolution expressing Congressional disapproval of this practice, instructing each committee of the House to take whatever steps are appropriate within its jurisdiction to write legislation in ways that make such abuse of a constitutional principle impossible, for example by specifically cutting off funding in cases where the Administration has attempted to pick and choose which parts of the law it will follow; and instructing the House Counsel on behalf of the House as an entity to frame and file any lawsuit or lawsuits which are appropriate to defend the right of the Congress to legislate.

"We believe that this resolution will give every Member of the House the opportunity to make clear whether or not he or she stands behind the fundamental principles of government set forward in the U.S. Constitution. In the absence of such action, we fear that the President and his appointees will take silence as acquiescence and continue to flout constitutional principle," Markey and Frank concluded.

http://www.house.gov/frank/bypassinglaws.html