Donklephant reminds us that the President still loves to add caveats to almost every bill he signs into law.
Donklephant quotes a Boston Globe article, pointing out that Bush considers Congress-prescribed minimum qualifications to be an unconstitutional infringement of the Chief Executive’s authority to appoint the best-qualified individual for a job within the Executive Branch, and that the granting of Congressional authorization to empower FEMA to act independently as necessary when faced with emergency is an unconstitutional infringement of the White House’s control over executive agencies.
While I can actually see that Bush (or his lawyers) do have a point in that Congress may be overstepping the separation of powers in the Constitution… signing a law and then nullifying it seems like an awfully sleazy thing to do. If there is a problem with a new law, the President can and probably should veto it. Better yet, for laws like this, Bush could have vetoed it, and then implemented the spirit of the new law via executive order.