Dateline: 01/28/02

Lawsuit or no lawsuit, Vice President Dick Cheney stated Sunday that he would not turn over to Congress documents relating to Enron's participation in the development of the Bush administration's national energy policy.

Since Sept. 2001, the General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, has been pressing the White House to turn over information from meetings held between energy industry leaders and the Bush administration's national energy policy task force headed by Cheney. 

Moved to a back-burner by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the issue became recharged by the increasingly nasty collapse of energy industry giant, Enron (Web site). The national energy policy, adopted in May 2001, calling for increased energy exploration and production, contained provisions specifically sought by Enron executives.

On Sunday, Cheney told interviewers on ABC's "This Week" program that "Enron didn't get any special deals." 

Appearing on "Fox News Sunday," Cheney accused congressional Democrats of reviving the debate for political reasons. "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," said Cheney,

Last week, GAO's Comptroller General David Walker, stated he was considering taking the unprecedented action of filing suit against the White House to get the information.

Cheney stated that a successful lawsuit forcing him to turn over "a listing of everybody I meet with, of everything that was discussed, any advice that was received, notes and minutes of those meetings," would severely limit the ability of the White House to hold confidential meetings with expert advisers. 

"You just cannot accept that proposition without putting a chill over the ability of the president and vice president to receive unvarnished advice," said Cheney. "The net result of that is to weaken the presidency and the vice presidency."

A Question of Jurisdiction
GAO Comptroller General David Walker contends that since information from the meetings of Cheney's energy policy task force was gathered at taxpayers' expense, GAO has both the jurisdiction and authority to demand the records, and to file suit to get them, if necessary.

The White House, however, argues that the GAO's authority extends only to government agencies created by statute, or by acts of Congress, not to government entities originally established by the Constitution, like the president and vice president.

"Their [GAO's] jurisdiction extends to agencies created by statute. That's not me," stated Vice President Cheney. "I'm a constitutional officer. And the authority of the GAO does not extend in that case to my office."

If GAO goes ahead with its suit, the case will almost certainly end up demanding a landmark decision by the  U.S. Supreme Court, where the justices will have to consider that under Title 31- Chapter 7, Subchapter 2, section 712 of the U.S. Code, GAO is granted the authority to:

• (1) investigate all matters related to the receipt,
  disbursement, and use of public money;

• (2) estimate the cost to the United States Government of
  complying with each restriction on expenditures of a specific
  appropriation in a general appropriation law and report each
  estimate to Congress with recommendations the Comptroller General
  considers desirable;

• (3) analyze expenditures of each executive agency the
  Comptroller General believes will help Congress decide whether
  public money has been used and expended economically and
  efficiently;

• (4) make an investigation and report ordered by either House of
  Congress or a committee of Congress having jurisdiction over
  revenue, appropriations, or expenditures; and
  
  
• (5) give a committee of Congress having jurisdiction over
  revenue, appropriations, or expenditures the help and information
  the committee requests.

The General Accounting Office (GAO) is an independent, non-partisan branch of Congress designated to study the programs and expenditures of the federal government. It investigates how taxpayer dollars are spent and reports to Congress and the heads of executive agencies about ways to make government more effective and responsive.