[WASHINGTON, D.C.] -- U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, today included language in the his subcommittee's appropriation bill to suspend funds for the Office of the Vice President in FY2008 until the Office of the Vice President complies with Executive Order 12958. The Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government Appropriations has jurisdiction over the Executive Office of the President (including the Office of the Vice President) and the National Archives (including Information Security Oversight Office).

            The Vice President's office has refused to comply with Executive Order 12958.  First issued by President Clinton in 1995 and updated and reissued by President Bush in 2003, this Executive Order establishes uniform, government-wide procedures for classifying, safeguarding, and declassifying national security information.  Among other obligations, it requires an "entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information" to report annually on how much it is keeping secret.

The Office of the Vice President asserts that it is not such an "entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information." The Office contends that because the Vice President has both executive and legislative functions under the Constitution, his office is not strictly an executive branch agency. Serious questions have been raised recently about both the legality and the appropriateness of the Vice President exempting his office from the rules that apply to all other Executive Branch officials.

On June 25, 2007, Durbin wrote to Mr. Cheney (pdf) regarding his attempts to exempt the Office of the Vice President from this executive order. In the letter, Durbin called on Cheney to take corrective action regarding this matter prior to the Subcommittee markup. There was no response from the Vice President's office and today the subcommittee took the step of restricting funding for the Office of the Vice President for fiscal year 2008 unless and until they comply with the executive order. Funding for the Vice President's official residence is in a different account in the bill which is not restricted by today's action.