Democrats Consider Defunding Vice President Cheney's Office

WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney's claim that he doesn't have to follow executive orders on safeguarding classified information because he is part of the legislative branch has prompted congressional Democrats to respond in kind.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, is proposing lopping off funding for the vice president's office when the annual spending bill for the executive branch comes before the House later this week.

"The vice president has a choice to make," Emanuel said in a statement released over the weekend. "If he believes his legal case, his office has no business being funded as part of the executive branch."

Lea Anne McBride, the vice president's spokeswoman, fired back: "I'd say that congressman Emanuel has a choice to make: he can either deal with the serious issues facing our country or create more partisan politics."

Cheney has been in a standoff with an obscure office of the National Archives, which is supposed to oversee the handling of classified materials and make periodic inspections of executive agencies. The vice president, whose office has come under fire for security breaches, has declined to give annual reports to the archives and has refused to allow on-site inspections of his office.

Cheney's legal staff has asserted that he is exempt from executive orders because he is, in fact, part of the legislative branch. The only job listed for the vice president in the Constitution is president of the Senate.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino declined to speculate on the constitutional issue but said that President Bush, who issued a revised executive order on safeguarding classified information in 2003, had not intended the order to cover the vice president's office.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who chairs the Senate subcommittee that funds the Vice President's office, sent Cheney a letter Monday threatening "corrective action" by the committee if he does not comply with the executive orders, saying it could place national security secrets at risk.

He called Cheney's assertion a "Constitutional caricature" and noted that the chief justice of the Supreme Court, for example, is not part of the legislative branch simply because he must preside over the Senate during an impeachment trial.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should recuse himself from any role in the dispute because of a controversy over his political ties with the White House. Gonzales was asked last January by the National Archives to make a ruling, but he has not yet responded.

Schumer said that another official, the U.S. solicitor general, should be given the job of settling the issue.

As for the idea that the vice president is not in the executive branch, Schumer said that "defies reason and common sense" and added, "It seems the vice president claims to exist in an alternative legal universe, where the law is whatever he says it is."

The House proposal to cut off funding for the vice president's office is "something I would seriously consider," Schumer said.

He conceded that Cheney's legal tactics could fend off any National Archives inspection until his term ends in 2009.