Excellent news, this:
Dialing back his predecessor's expansive view of the office, Vice President-elect Joe Biden plans on "restoring the Office of the Vice President to its historical role" as adviser to the president and tie-breaker in the Senate, an aide to Biden said Saturday.The declaration results from an attention-getting article coming from the Las Vegas Sun, which is reporting Sunday in a story by Washington Bureau reporter Lisa Mascaro that the new Congress "will reassert its constitutional independence from the White House by barring the vice president from joining in internal Senate deliberations, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in an interview with the Sun."
"The move is intended to restore checks and balances to a system that tilted heavily toward the White House in the Bush presidency," Mascaro writes. "By giving Vice President Dick Cheney regular access to Senate Republican caucuses, at times with White House advisers in tow, party unity became more important to many Republicans than upholding their responsibilities to provide legislative oversight of the executive, experts say."
The paper says that when Reid was asked whether Biden will be allowed to attend Senate Democratic caucus meetings, Reid said: "Absolutely not."
Elizabeth Alexander, spokesperson for the vice president-elect, e-mailed in response: "Vice President-elect Biden had no intention of continuing the practice started by Vice President Cheney of regularly attending internal legislative branch meetings -- he firmly believes in restoring the Office of the Vice President to its historical role. He and Senator Reid see eye to eye on this."
Although the new administration is going to face all kinds of short- and medium-term problems, nothing is more important over the long-term than repairing the damage done to our constitutional structures.
