There’s been considerably less attention given to the latest installment of the WaPo’s massive Dick Cheney profile, “The Angler,” in part because the first two were so dramatic, the third pales in comparison. Today’s edition describes the Vice President’s role in shaping the White House’s domestic agenda, including tax policy. As Jo Becker and Barton Gellman explained, “The president is ‘the decider,’ as Bush puts it, but the vice president often serves up his menu of choices.”
Cheney led a group that winnowed the president’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees. Cheney resolved a crisis in the space program after the Columbia shuttle disaster. Cheney fashioned a controversial truce between the legislative and executive branches — and averted resignations at the top of the Justice Department and the FBI — over the right of law enforcement authorities to investigate political corruption in Congress.
And it was Cheney who served as the guardian of conservative orthodoxy on budget and tax matters. He shaped and pushed through Bush’s tax cuts, blunting the influence of Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, a longtime friend, and of Cabinet rivals he had played a principal role in selecting. He managed to overcome the president’s “compassionate conservative” resistance to multiple breaks for the wealthy. He even orchestrated a decision to let a GOP senator switch parties — giving control of the chamber to Democrats — rather than meet the senator’s demand for billions of dollars in new spending.
Perhaps the most interesting anecdote in today’s piece was an instance in which Bush wouldn’t give Cheney what he wanted — so Cheney went around him.
The issue was a tax-cut package in 2003. Cheney wanted deep reductions in the capital gains tax, Bush didn’t (he expressed doubts about giving another income tax break to the wealthiest Americans, after having talked about “compassionate conservatism for low-income families). When the VP was dispatched to the annual retreat of Republican House and Senate leaders, his principal goal was selling lawmakers on a $674 billion tax-cut package.
And wouldn’t you know it, the capital gains tax cut worked its way into the discussion.
As the Republican lawmakers debated in a closed-door session at the Greenbrier resort, the vice president revived the argument, touting his idea as a way to energize a stock market battered by scandals such as Enron. House allies inserted Cheney’s cut into their package. But that came at the expense of one of Bush’s priorities: abolishing the tax on stock dividends. […]
Bill Thomas, the California Republican who guided the final bill to passage as chairman of the House tax-writing committee, said he and Cheney go way back and “use each other in the best sense,” with the two men deciding which one will make a proposal and which will speak up in its support.
In the case of the capital gains proposal, Cheney pitched it to the Greenbrier gathering. Thomas pitched it to the White House, and he credited the vice president with persuading Bush to go along. “That,” Thomas said, “is why the administration changed its position.”
The article also noted that Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and Treasury Secretary Paul H. O’Neill opposed the tax-cut plan, and tried to warn the White House about the consequences. Cheney handled it as only Cheney can — he shielded Bush from Greenspan and fired O’Neill.
With a passive, unaware president, Cheney apparently wins even when he loses.