Secrecy may cost Cheney, Dems warn

26 Jun 2007 // Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) yesterday warned Dick Cheney that his office would risk losing its budget unless the vice president agrees to follow a presidential directive ordering the protection of classified information.

Durbin chairs the Appropriations subcommittee on financial services and general government, which writes the executive-branch spending bill that funds the vice president’s budget.

Durbin’s warning came as Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), No. 3 in Democratic leadership, said that he would “seriously consider” joining House counterparts in seeking to yank funding for Cheney’s office after the vice president contended that his office is a hybrid entity that is neither legislative nor executive.

“The decision to exempt your office from this system for protecting classified information is deeply troubling because it could place national security secrets at risk,” Durbin wrote to Cheney yesterday. Durbin did not specify how appropriators would hit Cheney’s funding.

Durbin’s subcommittee is slated to mark up its spending bill just after July 4th recess. The House will take up its version of the bill this week, and Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) is vowing a floor push to strike all $4.4 million of the vice president’s budget.

Durbin called on Cheney to avert the funds cut by immediately adhering to the 1995 executive order at issue. That directive refers to executive “agencies,” a designation that both Cheney and President Bush believe does not apply to the vice president.

Schumer, while noting that Emanuel’s approach would not practically ensure Cheney’s compliance, appeared as ready as Durbin to take a muscular stance against the vice president.
“I’d much prefer … Cheney just comply with the law and we not have to use this kind of leverage, but it’s something I’d seriously consider,” Schumer said.

Schumer also called for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to withdraw from the Department of Justice’s (DoJ) debate over whether Cheney can ignore the rules on safeguarding classified data.

“It’s clear to just about everyone in America that the attorney general has lost the faith and trust of the American people in making impartial decisions when it affects the president and the vice president,” Schumer told reporters yesterday.

For his part, Emanuel said fellow House leaders are encouraging his purse-strings counterpunch, which Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) termed “not a bad idea at all” during a Sunday Fox News interview.

“I’ve talked to the Speaker’s office,” Emanuel said. “Not only is she OK with me bringing it up, she supports it.”

The clash over classification opens a new front for Democrats in their ongoing oversight battle with the administration. Gonzales got involved in January, when the little-known Information Security Oversight Office, a unit of the National Archives, asked the DoJ’s Office of Legal Counsel to review whether Cheney was subject to the executive order.

But when Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy, requested DoJ documents on the Cheney question this month, the agency told him none were available—strongly suggesting that no work has been done to resolve Cheney’s role.

“The overriding fact to me is that the attorney general has not acted in the past five months,” Aftergood said of his request, first reported this weekend in Newsweek. “That raises the question of whether he’s somehow covering for the vice president or yielding to him.”

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino yesterday defended Cheney’s interpretation of his office while declining to address contradictions between the vice president’s previous claims to executive privilege and his current argument that he is not part of the executive.

Perino also appeared to suggest that a DoJ ruling on Cheney’s role is not necessary because President Bush did not intend the rules to apply to his vice president.

“[The issue] can be resolved either by the Justice Department or, as I am telling you as the president’s spokesman, he did not intend for the vice president to be seen as separate from himself,” Perino told reporters.

Emanuel’s amendment, to be debated Wednesday, would put Cheney’s executive-branch funding on hold until a determination is made by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, on whether Cheney is a member of the executive or legislative branch.

“I’m going to let the money follow his logic,” Emanuel said. “One moment he’s not a part of the executive branch so he can be above the law, but he wants money as part of the executive branch.”

Cheney’s argument is proving hard for some Republicans to defend. Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-Miss.) suggested over the weekend that the judiciary should decide the dispute. Aftergood and other government-transparency advocates noted, however, that Congress would first have accomplish the tricky feat of giving itself standing in court.

But most House Republicans called Emanuel’s maneuver a desperate and meaningless gesture.

“The clock on the first quarter is running out, they have no points on the board, so why not throw up a brick from half court on the way to the locker room?” asked Brian Kennedy, spokesman to House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio). “Where’s the beer guy?”

Cheney’s office, meanwhile, is staying on the offensive: “Congressman Emanuel has a choice to make — deal with serious issues or create more partisan politics,” vice presidential spokeswoman Lee Ann McBride said.