Senate panel cuts off Cheney's funds

[Lanya]

From the Associated Press
UP
Senate Panel Cuts Off Funds to Cheney


Tuesday July 10, 2007 10:31 PM

By ANDREW TAYLOR

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Senate Democrats moved Tuesday to cut off funding for Vice President Dick Cheney's office in a continuing battle over whether he must comply with national security disclosure rules.

A Senate appropriations panel chaired by Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., refused to fund $4.8 million in the vice president's budget until Cheney's office complies with parts of an executive order governing its handling of classified information.

At issue is a requirement that executive branch offices provide data on how much material they classify and declassify. That information is to be provided to the Information Security Oversight Office at The National Archives.

Cheney's office, with backing from the White House, argues that the offices of the president and vice president are exempt from the order because they are not executive branch ``agencies.''

The funding cut came as the appropriations panel approved 5-4 along party lines a measure funding White House operations, the Treasury Department and many smaller agencies.

Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said Cheney's office was flouting requirements that it comply with the reporting requirements on classified information.

``Neither Mr. Cheney or his staff is above the law or the Constitution,'' Durbin said. ``For the vice president to believe that he has no responsibility to meet this requirement of the law is a dereliction of duty.''

The tempest originally attracted widespread media attention after Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., charged that Cheney's office's had originally argued to the Archives that it did not have to comply with the order because it was not ``an entity within the executive branch.''

The vice president is also the president of the Senate, able to vote to break ties and preside over the chamber, though he is not eligible to sponsor legislation or participate in debates.

Cheney's office, Waxman said, also blocked the archives from doing an onsite inspection of his office to make sure classified information was being properly protected.

Republicans on the Senate panel said Durbin was going overboard in using Congress' power of the purse to try to force Cheney to conform with the order.

Such a step, said Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., would set a terrible precedent in relations between the executive and legislative branches of government, which have historically let each other set their own budgets.

``This is going to further erode any sort of working relationship back and forth,'' Brownback said. ``This is a patently bad idea.''

The House last month narrowly rejected a comparable attempt by Democrats to cut off funding for Cheney's office.

On Tuesday, two panel Democrats - moderates Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Ben Nelson of Nebraska - registered discomfort with Durbin's move, though they backed him when Republicans forced a vote.

Brownback said the executive order does not apply to Cheney's office because it is not an agency. But Durbin insisted that Cheney's office is explicitly covered because the order applies to ``any other entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information.''

http://rawstory.com/showarticle.php?src=http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6770607,00.html

[BT]

Interesting precedent.

Wonder how it will play with the roles reversed.

[Mucho]

Interesting precedent.

Wonder how it will play with the roles reversed.

The way things are going , it will be a loooong time before we find that out.

[Lanya]

National security disclosure rules.  Sounds really onerous, doesn't it?

What I've read is that he won't disclose lots of things that are required to be disclosed by the law.

The law...yeah, that old thing.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002962226_cheney30.html
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Explaining why the vice president has withheld even a tally of his office's secrecy when offices such as the National Security Council routinely report theirs, a spokeswoman said Cheney is "not under any duty" to provide it.
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http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002427.php

Veep Keeps Staff Size under Wraps
By Justin Rood - January 29, 2007, 1:50 PM

At TPM, David Kurtz recently mused on the irrational secrecy which has cloaked the Office of the Vice Presidency's staff list since Dick Cheney set up shop there. "It's about a perverse sense of entitlement and a deep aversion to scrutiny and accountability," wrote Kurtz. ""Time to shine some light on the OVP."

If that's not throwing down the gauntlet to the muckrakers, we don't know what is.

We called Leadership Directories, Inc., a private company which publishes expensive telephone books listing federal officials. OVP routinely shares information on roughly 30 employees, they told us. Of course, that's likely less than half the number of staffers in his office: in the January issue of the Washington Monthly, Laura Rozen estimates Cheney's staff size to be 88, plus various experts assigned temporary duty to OVP by their federal agencies. (The largest concentration of staff in a single area is likely to be in Cheney's national security staff: in 2005, Foreign Policy's David Rothkopf asserted (reg. req.) that Cheney has the largest national security staff of any vice president ever, with guesses ranging from 15 to 35 at any given time.)

Cheney's office refuses to give any details to reporters. His office is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, so any such request would be futile. What's more, Cheney appears to have exempted his office from having to disclose the number of appointed officials in his ranks: all other agencies have to release theirs for a government directory known as the "Plum Book."
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[Xavier_Onassis]

Wonder how it will play with the roles reversed.

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So far as I know, no VP's office has ever refused thde requested information, and few, if any, have ever been reposiotories of classified information.

Cheney is clearly way out of line, and it will be fun watching the evil bastard squirm.

[BT]

Not concerned at this point with the classified info brouhaha. I am unaware of congess refusing to fund the vp office.

And i do wonder how that will play out.

and will it still play when the roles are reversed.

[Xavier_Onassis]

And i do wonder how that will play out.

and will it still play when the roles are reversed.

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I fail to understand why you assume that the roles will be reversed.
Cheney is unique among vice presidents in that he is obsessively secretive about everything and apparently has great power. This is very unusual historically. Most VP's have had no power and did little more than attend state funerals, occasionally whack a gavel in the Sernate and wait about for the President to croak or get assassinated.

Cheney is the least popular VP in recent history. He cares not one whit what the people think of him, and his opinions are anathema to most people. It is quite unlikely that we will ever be cursed with anyone as secretive, hateful or annoying as Dick Cheney.

So I doubt that this issue will ever be repeated.

[Brassmask]

This is a dangerous game being played here and one that, I think, will backfire on the committee and the Dems.

The amount they're withholding is paltry by governmental standards.  $5M?  Come on, Cheney could pony that up without missing it and MORE.  This could lead to a usurping of the Constitution and allow Cheney and the gang to fund their own special brand of government simply because the congress won't.