[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 39, Number 46 (Monday, November 17, 2003)]
[Pages 1576-1577]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Statement on Signing the Department of the Interior and Related Agencies 
Appropriations Act, 2004

November 10, 2003

    Today, I have signed into law H.R. 2691, the Department of the 
Interior and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2004.
    Under the appropriations heading ``Construction'' for the Bureau of 
Indian Affairs, the Act refers to one subsection of title 25 of the 
United States Code that do not exist (25 U.S.C. 2505(f)) and one 
provision in title 25 that exists (25 U.S.C. 2005(a)) but which, as is 
plain from the text of the Act, is not the provision to which the Act 
was intended to refer. The Director of the Office of Management and 
Budget shall submit immediately on my behalf for the consideration of 
the Congress legislation to correct these errors in the Act. If 
corrective legislation is not enacted before execution of the provisions 
under the appropriations heading becomes necessary, the Attorney General 
shall provide a legal opinion to the Secretary of the Interior on how to 
faithfully execute the appropriations heading in light of the errors it 
contains.
    The executive branch shall construe sections 101 and 325 of the Act, 
which purport to require the executive branch to submit to the Congress 
in certain circumstances a request for a supplemental appropriation or 
for enactment of other legislation, in a manner consistent with the 
President's constitutional authority to submit for the consideration of 
the Congress such measures as the President judges necessary and 
expedient.
    Many provisions in the Act purport to require the consent or 
approval of committees of the Congress before executive branch execution 
of aspects of the Act or purport to preclude executive branch execution 
of a provision of the Act upon the written disapproval of such 
committees. The executive

[[Page 1577]]

branch shall construe such provisions to require only notification to 
the Congress, because any other construction would contravene the 
constitutional principles set forth by the United States Supreme Court 
in 1983 in its decision in INS v. Chadha.
                                                George W. Bush
 The White House,
 November 10, 2003.