Democrats to Let Navy Pay for Cheney's Electricity
"Some Democrats have said it is wrong for Mr. Cheney to try to
make others pay his electricity bill at a time when millions
of Americans are struggling with their energy costs.
July 31, 2001
From The New York Times
By PHILIP SHENON
WASHINGTON, July 30 - Senate Democratic leaders have
decided for now to allow Vice President Dick Cheney to shift all the
electricity bills for his official home to the Navy, a plan that had been
criticized by Democrats as evidence of a double standard.
A spending bill that includes the bookkeeping shift has already been
approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee and awaits a final vote
on the Senate floor, possibly this week.
The White House had requested the budget transfer, citing the large and
fluctuating electricity bills for Mr. Cheney's 33-room residence, which is on
the grounds of the Washington Naval Observatory.
The energy bills - an estimated $134,000 this year - are currently shared
between Mr. Cheney's official budget and the Navy, with the Navy paying
most of the cost. Spokesmen for Mr. Cheney, the administration's point man
on energy policy, said the shift would simplify government bookkeeping and
would cost taxpayers nothing extra.
Some Democrats have said it is wrong for Mr. Cheney to try to make others
pay his electricity bill at a time when millions of Americans are struggling with
their energy costs.
But the chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees White
House spending, Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota,
said he agreed to include the bookkeeping provision in the appropriations bill
at the request of the White House.
Mr. Dorgan said that while he did not think the Navy should be required to
bear all the electricity costs at the home, he agreed to the plan because "this
is a matter of comity between the Congress and the executive branch."
The plan could now be blocked only by an amendment on the Senate floor,
and Mr. Dorgan said he knew of no plans by his colleagues to offer such an
amendment.
There has been no similar sense of bipartisan good will on the issue in the
House. A Democratic effort to block the White House plan failed in a House
vote last week, 285 to 140.
Mr. Cheney's office welcomed the Senate decision not to block the
bookkeeping shift. Mary Matalin, Mr. Cheney's political adviser, said today,
"The question is not why the Senate didn't make an issue of it; it's how
obsessed the House Democrats are with making energy a political issue
instead of helping with policy solutions."
There is continuing debate between the Bush administration and former
Clinton administration officials over who came up with the idea of the
bookkeeping change.
Mr. Cheney's office has said that the idea was proposed in the Clinton
administration, when Vice President Al Gore lived in the house. A White
House official who worked in both administrations, speaking on the condition
of anonymity, said the Clinton administration had been near a final decision to
make the Navy pay all the electricity bills.
But former Clinton administration officials say that while they discussed a
variety of bookkeeping shifts, they never came close to a decision to transfer
the costs. They say they are being unfairly blamed for an embarrassing
decision that is the responsibility of the Bush administration
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