Bush staffer to Congress: Back off on oversight. Our advice: Read "Crossing the Line"

crew — Fri, 6 Jul 2007 08:31:24 -0500

Yesterday, Bush spokesman Scott Stanzel criticized the oversight being imposed on the Bush administration by the Democratic-led Congress:

Bush spokesman Scott Stanzel told reporters during the daily briefing that the White House has been subject to an average of about six oversight hearings a day since Democrats took control of Congress. In that time, he added, the administration has turned over 200,000 pages of documents.

Said Stanzel: “I would raise those issues because it raises the question, what does Congress want to do? Do they want to pass legislation for the American people or would they rather investigate and have politics be the course of the day?

The reality is that for the past six years, there was no oversight of Congress. That's led to an out-of-control administration as CREW documented earlier this week in our report, Crossing the Line. As Melanie Sloan said when we issued the report, “Vice President Cheney and Bush administration officials are working hard to reconfigure the executive branch to conform with their preference for absolute power rather than with clearly established constitutional boundaries." That kind of abuse warrants more oversight, not less.

CREW catalogues Bush/Cheney administration's abuses of power and overreaching in new report, Crossing the Line

crew — Mon, 2 Jul 2007 14:16:00 -0500

Today, CREW released a new report entitled Crossing the Line: The Bush Administration's Efforts to Expand Its Powerful Reach. The title pretty much sums it up. Based on several specific specific developments, several where CREW has direct involvement, we detailed the Bush administration’s repeated constitutional overreaching and abuse of executive power and prerogative. The full report can be found here.

Crossing the Line makes two major findings:

1) Vice President Dick Cheney, who recently asserted that he's not subject to Executive Orders because of his unique "fourth branch" status, is quietly, but diligently, working to establish case law that equates the power of the vice presidency with the power of the presidency; and

2) the Bush administration is intent on expanding the power of executive privilege well beyond constitutional bounds.

CREW's Melanie Sloan said that Vice President Cheney and Bush administration officials "are working hard to reconfigure the executive branch to conform with their preference for absolute power rather than with clearly established constitutional boundaries. CREW’s report depicts an administration out of control.”

We drew upon several of our own cases to document these findings and back up the assertion that the Bush administration is "out of control":

Recently it was revealed that the vice president has unilaterally exempted himself and his office from the executive order that governs the safeguarding of classified national security information.

In response to a suit filed by Valerie and Joseph Wilson against Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials, Mr. Cheney argued that as vice president he is entitled to absolute immunity from suit.

In response to a CREW suit over visitor logs, the administration is attempting to reclassify Secret Service documents as presidential documents under the exclusive control of the White House. The vice president has argued that the constitutional protections afforded the presidency apply with equal force to his office.

In a suit filed by CREW over a FOIA request of the Federal Emergency Management Agency for Hurricane Katrina-related documents, the government invoked the presidential communications privilege, suggesting an attempt to cover-up what President Bush actually knew before, during and after the hurricane devastated the Gulf Coast.

During the course of CREW’s FOIA lawsuit against the White House Office of Administration (OA) for documents relating to five million missing White House emails, the OA claimed that it was responding “as a matter of administrative discretion,” not because the OA is an “agency” bound by the FOIA.

Crossing the Line does indeed document an administration that is "out of control" and trying to usurp the constitution.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington - Crossing the Line

Bush staffer to Congress: Back off on oversight. Our advice: Read "Crossing the Line"

CREW catalogues Bush/Cheney administration's abuses of power and overreaching in new report, Crossing the Line