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Cheney: Banking on the Budget?

The Democrats are now set to make good on their threat to defund the Office of the Vice President. Rep. Rahm Emauel says the point of bringing a resolution up for vote is not to withhold the money but rather to elicit an admission that Cheney is in fact a part of the executive branch and thus subject to rules governing it.

But this graf from today's installment of WaPo's Cheney series has me wondering if a new meme isn't being Xeroxed as I type this for why defunding the VP is an ill-advised track for the Dems to take.
The vice president chairs a budget review board, a panel the Bush administration created to set spending priorities and serve as arbiter when Cabinet members appeal decisions by White House budget officials. The White House has portrayed the board as a device to keep Bush from wasting time on petty disagreements, but previous administrations have seldom seen Cabinet-level disputes in that light. Cheney's leadership of the panel gives him direct and indirect power over the federal budget -- and over those who must live within it. (emphasis mine)

I can just see it now. Cheney and his supporters could argue that his role as head of his budget panel is vital for the continued functioning of the executive branch and defunding his office would therefore place the entire branch in jeopardy of breaking down into dysfunction (more so than it already is of course). It can be argued then that by bringing this vote, the Democrats are attempting to break the executive branch. Now who's overreaching their authority?

Leaving aside for the moment that Bush could simply veto any bill defunding the Veep's office, if this does become the new talking point during the debate, I doubt anyone would note the irony of Cheney claiming his participation in this executive panel is critical to a branch he recently claimed to be independent from.

Blog Thanks: Salon's Blog Report for linking to the SotD of this post.

(Filed at State of the Day)