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 CHENEY VOWS: NO MORE FOX NEWS SUNDAY Sun Jan 27 2002 10:46:06 ET VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: The problem we've had is that Henry Waxman doesn't want to have to deal with the substance of the report, but he's tried to attack the report by challenging the process, by saying we didn't meet with the right people. He's gotten the GAO involved now and demanding... FOX NEWS TONY SNOW: Government Accounting Office. CHENEY: Government Accounting Office -- and demanding that we produce information about how the report was put together. Now, we've given him an awful lot. We've given him all the financial records, the work that was done by the agency, all of that's gone to the GAO. What we've not given them, and where the dispute lies, is they've demanded of me that I give Henry Waxman a listing of everybody I meet with, of everything that was discussed, any advice that was received, notes and minutes of those meetings. Now, that would be unprecedented in the sense that that's not been done before. It's unprecedented in the sense that it would make it virtually impossible for me to have confidential conversations with anybody. It, in effect, says that I, and future vice presidents, would be in a position where any time Henry Waxman or any other member of Congress wants to demand of me information about the meetings I hold, I'd have to give it to them. The lawyers in the executive branch are convinced this is a fundamentally bad idea. SNOW: So you'll go to court over this? CHENEY: As of last August, we've made that decision to go to court. We'd come to an ultimate showdown, and we've concluded that, in fact, we were prepared to go to court if that's what was necessary. At that point, the GAO backed off, and they, in effect, sort of put everything in abeyance. Now what's happened is we've come back around, as a result of the Enron corporate collapse, some of the Democrats on the Hill are trying to re-energize this and try to turn it into some kind of political debate with respect to Enron. But what's really at stake here is the ability of the president and the vice president to solicit advice from anybody they want in confidence, get good, solid, unvarnished advice without having to make it available to a member of Congress. The GAO does not have the authority to get into that particular arena. It has a... SNOW: Is there any circumstance -- you talked before about compromises, that there may be... CHENEY: Well, I think we have compromised. We've given them a great deal of information. We have not given them those things that we believe that I have to have -- I have to have the ability to talk to people in confidence if I'm going to effectively advise the president. SNOW: So you will not give them anything more? CHENEY: That's correct. SNOW: No more compromises? CHENEY: That's correct. SNOW: David Walker, the comptroller general, said just yesterday: "We've never had any situation where we were absolutely stonewalled by a task force of this type. The law in past precedence says that Congress has a right to this information and can use the GAO to conduct a non-partisan review." CHENEY: No, that's where the dispute lies, because the GAO is a creature of the Congress, created by statute. Their jurisdiction extends to agencies created by statute. That's not me. I'm, as part of the office of the president and the vice president of the United States, I'm a constitutional officer. And the authority of the GAO does not extend in that case to my office. Now, I've been around town for 34 years, Tony. I've seen a constant, steady erosion of the power and the ability of the president to do his job. We've seen the War Powers Act and Anheim (ph) Powerment (ph) Control Act. And time after time after time, administrations have traded away the authority of the president to do his job. We're not going to do that in this administration. The president's bound and determined to defend those principles and to pass on this office, his and mine, to future generations in better shape then we found it. And for us to compromise on this basic fundamental principle would in effect do that. It would further weaken the presidency, and we don't want to do that. END |
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