Efforts on the part of congressional Dems to cut off funding for Dick Cheney’s office may sound like a bit of a stunt. That’s because, well, they probably are. It’s a great stunt, which makes for highly entertaining political theater, and Dems are absolutely right to justify this as a legitimate tactic, but it’s still a stunt.
Michael Currie Schaffer, however, makes an excellent case today that this entire approach deserves to be taken very seriously. Indeed, Schaffer suggests Dems push this about as far as they can.
Rahm Emanuel last week said he’d introduce legislation putting a hold on Cheney’s budget until he clarifies which branch of government he belongs to. But given the array of disagreements between Democrats and Cheney over the basic rules of government, Emanuel’s measure should go further still.
There’s no reason Congress couldn’t tie some substantive strings to the roughly $7 million a year that taxpayers spend on the care, feeding, and staff of the vice president. Of that money, about $4.4 million is designated “[f]or necessary expenses to enable the Vice President to provide assistance to the President” and another $320,000 goes to cars, expenses and “the care, operation, refurnishing, improvement, and to the extent not otherwise provided for, heating and lighting, including electric power and fixtures, of the official residence.” A sentence here or there in the federal budget could tie funding for that residence, to, say, regular official disclosure of its visitors. Likewise, Congress could leave it up to the vice president as to whether he would comply with executive orders on classified information or lose a hefty chunk of his personnel budget. And so on.
Works for me. Schaffer notes that there are some questions about separation of powers here, but Cheney’s the one who emphasizes his legislative duties to rationalize his 4th-branch status.
The OVP’s budget includes $2.2 million from the legislative budget (indeed, Cheney’s paycheck comes from the Senate). It’s not a separation-of-powers argument if the Senate regulates spending for its own chamber. Schaffer explained:
If Cheney’s going to be such a stickler for constitutional lines of command, he would surely have to concede that Senators themselves have the right to decide how much money their branch’s president ought to spend on personnel. If that number drops to zero, well, he should have thought of that before stiffing their requests for transparency.
I’m not getting my hopes up — I kind of doubt there would be enough votes to support this kind of endeavor — but it’s a good idea, isn’t it?