In a letter to the president, four Democrats including House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey said [they] were “surprised” and “chagrined” by Obama’s signing statement that accompanied a war spending bill.

[President George W.] Bush had relied on such statements to ignore laws he thought put unconstitutional limits on his executive power. Obama criticized Bush for frequently doing so but said he’d use them if authorized by the attorney general.

Obama’s signing statement said he wouldn’t allow provisions regarding international financial institutions to interfere with his ability to conduct foreign diplomacy.

The move comes less than a week after President Barack Obama unveiled his own sweeping plan to tackle the housing market collapse, which also featured support for the bankruptcy, or “cramdown,” provision — a move the finance and mortgage lending industries have fervently opposed.

The Hill points out, however, that there are some nuanced differences between the White House approach to cramdown and that of congressional Democrats:

When he unveiled his plan last week to help the housing sector, President Obama voiced support for allowing bankruptcy judges to alter mortgages, but emphasized that courts should be seen as a last resort. Loan modifications should be worked through between homeowners and the owner of the mortgage before homeowners turn to judges, he said.

The House bill says that a homeowner must have “attempted” to contact the lender or servicer before heading to a bankruptcy proceeding, but it does not require that the lender has received all the information. The bill also does not appear to limit the value of a mortgage that a judge can write down, which the financial services industry says opens the process up to far too many homeowners.

The House could bring the proposal to the floor as soon as Thursday,

President George W. Bush announced today that he will release oil from the country’s emergency reserves in the wake of Hurricane Gustav. The reason? Because an oil company asked, of course.

From Reuters:

“Last night we got a request from a company doing business here in Louisiana and we met that request,” Bush told reporters, referring to a request by Citgo Petroleum Corp, which is owned by the Venezuelan state oil company.

“Oil was released from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and we will continue to do that upon request by companies,” Bush said after being briefed on recovery efforts in Louisiana.

For months, House Democrats have been calling (to no avail) on the Bush administration to tap part of the petroleum reserves to ease fuel prices at the pump. Following Wednesday’s announcement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had some choice words for a president more receptive to oil companies than to Congress:

By ignoring the needs of consumers but responding to the request of oil companies, it is clear that the Bush-Cheney-McCain energy decisions are made with only one thing in mind — Big Oil.

Not that Pelosi’s plan to use the U.S. emergency cache is anything but a band-aid on a larger problem. But GOP criticism that the resource should be saved for emergencies only rings hollow considering that scores of Republican have spent the last month in Washington screaming from the rafters about the dire need to address the issue with an offshore drilling vote.

What do you call a debate in which neither side has a leg to stand on?