SOURCES AND EDITORIAL POLICY

The full text of each presidential signing statement issued by George W. Bush is provided. All text was initially copied directly from the White House website on May 31, June 1, and June 2, 2006, or the Government Printing Office (GPO) website on June 3 and 4, 2006. Thereafter, text will be copied as statements are issued. Except where otherwise noted, text came from the White House website.

Typographical, grammatical, and textual errors in the White House documents have been reproduced exactly; no editorial corrections have been made. All materials in brackets -- [  ] -- have been added by the editor of this website, not by the White House or the GPO. 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.

To help readers verify text, this site provides links to the individual documents at the White House and the GPO websites. To view a signing statement directly at the White House or GPO website, go to the unannotated text or annotated text page and click on the applicable link following the signing statement.

SELECTION OF DOCUMENTS

Only documents that the GPO or White House 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 camera 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.

NUMBERING AND SOURCE CITATIONS

Unlike Executive Orders and Proclamations, presidential signing statements are neither numbered nor neatly indexed on the White House website. Nor are they grouped or labeled in a way that they can be easily accessed or identified. In sum, they are difficult to find. For this reason, I have created a numbering scheme for the documents that I have located. The scheme is as follows:  NNNN-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 document issued in 2005. These numbers are not official and are not provided by the White House or any government entity or publisher. They are subject to change if additional statements are discovered.

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

                      <Volume #> WCPD, p. <page number> (<date>).

Example:        42 WCPD, p. 425 (March 13, 2006).

UPDATES

Sources are checked daily. This website is updated when new signing statements are issued and was last updated 6/29/2006.

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, it is hard to fully 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 page on this website that provides annotated text of 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 from the GPO. Text of the laws has been excerpted 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 annotated signing statements page also provides public law numbers and session law citations for all bills and resolutions that are the subject of a signing statement. These citations help lawyers and legal 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. Citations to codified Congressional enactments (e.g., the United States Code) are found only in the PDF documents. 

COPYRIGHT

The purpose of this webpage is to provide convenient access -- for the entire world -- to the text of George W. Bush's presidential signing statements. This site is to make sure that Americans for years to come have access to the Bush signing statements.Please contact me if you want to use this data for research purposes.