How To Play The Game
by dday
This is honestly the saddest news item I've seen in the whole of the Bush Administration.
So the Congress has taken the Bush Administration to court to enforce subpoenas of officials involved in the US Attorney purge. The Administration's lawyers have laid out, in an 83-page document, their opinion of the case, which (surprise) rests on the notion that the judiciary branch should stay out of a political dispute between the other two branches. And they conclude that the legislative has plenty of cards to play in such a battle against the executive.
"For over two hundred years, when disputes have arisen between the political branches concerning the testimony of executive branch witnesses before Congress, or the production of executive branch documents to Congress, the branches have engaged in negotiation and compromise," Justice Department lawyers wrote [...]
As part of their argument, the administration lawyers cited Congress' considerable leverage as the more traditional means of getting what it wants. This is from the motion:
And the Legislative Branch may vindicate its interests without enlisting judicial support: Congress has a variety of other means by which it can exert pressure on the Executive Branch, such as the withholding of consent for Presidential nominations, reducing Executive Branch appropriations, and the exercise of other powers Congress has under the Constitution.
Here's the thing. These may be Bush Administration lawyers doing the talking here, but they're absolutely right. The Congress has all sorts of tools in their arsenal to force compliance from the executive branch. They can shut down the nomination process. They can eliminate any and all expenditures for the President and staff or executive agencies. They can refuse to enact spending bills for programs and policies prized by the executive. They can constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court that may investigate the executive. They can use the power of inherent contempt to try those neglecting a Congressional subpoena, and imprison them. And they can, you know, vote to remove the President from office, or all civil officers of the United States, for that matter.
There are dozens of ways for this Congress to get the attention of the President, as the Justice Department's own lawyers recognize. But of course, they won't do that. They worry about their image, their perception by the voters, what the Republican noise machine would say about them, and all the rest.
I'm certain that this reminder by the DoJ wasn't an effort to get the Democratic Congress to recognize their own power, or even an effort to get the courts to rule in their favor. It was an effort to get Republicans to recall what tools they can use in the event of a Democratic President. A committed minority in the Senate can make life more miserable for the incoming executive than this majority has ever made it for George Bush; executive power rollback is in some ways simply a matter of Congressional will. One thing is clear; the go-along-to-get-along nature of the Democrats over the past eight years will not be reciprocated.
And it's deeply embarrassing that it takes a bunch of Regent University grads or whoever they've got on the case at the Bush Justice Department to point this out.
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