Once Again Bush Shows He Doesn't Understand Constitution He Swore to Uphold

The Hill newspaper is reporting that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is rejecting a claim by President Bush that he has pocket vetoed the defense authorization bill that was passed in December. The Constitution provides that if a President neither signs or vetoes legislation 10 days after he receives it from Congress, not counting Sundays, and the Congress is not in session, the bill doesn't become law. This provision is sometimes referred to as a "pocket veto" from the idea that the President put the bill in his or her "pocket" as opposed to taking official action.

The problem in this case is that the Congress hasn't been out of session because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has been conducting short "pro-forma" sessions to keep Bubble-Boy from making recess appointments. Therefore, according to Pelosi and Reid, the conditions for a pocket veto don't exist. The Bush administration counters with the novel argument that it can avail itself of the pocket veto in this case because the House of Representatives is not in session. According to a constitutional scholar at the Library of Congress this argument is, to use a technical term, bunk.

So now the question becomes what is the status of the legislation? Pelosi argues that if the bill is returned by the administration, she will regard it as having been vetoed and will schedule an override vote. The Bush administration argues that the Congress should pass new legislation. Once again Bush's lack of knowledge about what our Constitution does and does not permit him to do is responsible for uncertainity, this time involving funding our nation's defense.