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“TAXPAYER FUNDS AND THE PRESIDENT'S PERSONAL LEGAL DEFENSE” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the Senate section on pages S2249-S2250 on March 19, 1998.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
TAXPAYER FUNDS AND THE PRESIDENT'S PERSONAL LEGAL DEFENSE
Mr. CAMPBELL. Mr. President, I come to the floor today not only as a concerned citizen but also as a concerned lawmaker. As the chairman of the appropriations subcommittee which oversees the White House budget, I have some serious concerns about the taxpayer funds being used to pay for the President's personal legal defense.
In addition, I have to also state that I am concerned about the lack of response to committee requests. Specifically, on March 3, a request was made to the White House from this committee to provide responses to two simple questions: First, has the size of the legal staff within the Executive Office of the President, funded by appropriated money, changed significantly between fiscal year 1997 and fiscal year 1998? And, second, what is the current specific number of lawyers detailed to the Executive Office, and has that number changed significantly during this time?
In a recent report, Mr. President, it appears that the cadre of attorneys at the White House has ballooned from 4 to 39 in just the last year and a half or 2 years. Fully one-tenth, according to that newspaper article, one-tenth of the White House budget now goes to pay those attorneys. A number of them were transferred from other agencies. And in this year's budget request from those agencies, they are asking for a full FTE for those attorneys.
It appeared at the time that this information was both readily available and easy to provide, yet the White House has not given us any specifics. As of about a half an hour ago, we did get some partial answers but not nearly clear enough. During this same time, I continued to get Members and constituents asking me, as the chairman of the Treasury Subcommittee which appropriated the White House's budget, to provide them with some answers.
Finally, on this past Friday, March 13, I wrote a letter in an attempt to get a response from the White House. In that letter I requested that I receive the information by them by 12 o'clock yesterday, March 18. In that letter, I also asked the White House to provide me with a list of the total number of attorneys detailed to all of the Executive Office and from which agency they came. Yesterday, the subcommittee received a call from the General Counsel's Office stating that we would receive that information by 9 o'clock this morning. And as I have mentioned, we did receive a partial answer.
So now it is March 19, Mr. President, exactly 16 days after the initial request for information was made, and we still do not have the full answer. We are now preparing to do a hearing, as many of my colleagues know, Mr. President. I believe the American taxpayers have the right to ask some specific questions.
The 12 attorneys that were so-called ``borrowed'' from the other agencies to help the President with his personal legal problems command very good salaries for which we expect them to do work in keeping with the mission of their agency and for what they were hired to do.
What I would like to ask the Executive Office is, was the work of those attorneys in their agencies important? If it was important, then who is doing their work while they are temporarily borrowed or reassigned to the Executive Office? And if it was not important enough to keep them at their job, why did we hire them in the first place in the agencies?
What concerns me here is that as an appropriator I have the responsibility to follow up on these matters, and I take that very seriously. I do not think we are asking anything unreasonable and certainly do not want to just pile on the President. But this is taxpayer money and we have a right to make sure it is being spent wisely. We need to verify that the White House is not using appropriated funds for the President's personal legal defense. It is already illegal for any Government entity to use appropriated funds for anything other than what Congress appropriated the money.
In addition, there are many Government regulations from the Office of Government Ethics and the Justice Department which support the position that Government attorneys are to provide their services for Government interests only and not personal ones. That seems pretty clear and pretty well cut and dry to me. I do not request the answers to the questions that I believe are unnecessary. And I do not make frivolous requests. These are very important questions, plain and simple.
Finally, Mr. President, I announce that our committee intends to hold a hearing on the Executive Office's fiscal year 1999 request before the Easter recess and fully expect their response to this inquiry prior to that hearing.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the letter that we did send to Mr. Erskine Bowles, the Chief of Staff to the President, on March 13, 1998.
There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Appropriations,
Washington, DC, March 13, 1998.Mr. Erskine B. Bowles,Chief of Staff to the President,White House, Washington, DC
Dear Mr. Bowles: This letter is in reference to the size of the legal staff at the Executive Office of the President
(EXOP). As you are aware, there has been recent public concern about the use of appropriated funds for the private legal defense of the President.
As Chairman of the Subcommittee on Treasury and General Government, which funds the Executive Office of the President, I have a responsibility to respond to these concerns. I understand that my staff has made repeated requests to the Office of Administration for information relating to this issue, for which the office has not provided a response, but instead excuses and delays.
Specifically, my staff has requested that the following questions be answered: Has the size of the legal staff within all of EXOP, funded by appropriations, changed significantly during FY1997 and FY1998? And, what is the current number of Justice lawyers detailed to EXOP and has that number changed significantly during FY1997 and FY1998? In addition, I want to know the total number of lawyers detailed to all EXOP agencies and their detailing agency. Your responses should include all of the agencies falling under the EXOP and provide the specific FTE counts with a breakout of the employee and detail classification by EXOP agency.
I remind you that my staff acts on behalf of the Appropriations Committee and I expect that any request they make to you for information to be dealt with expeditiously. Because this request is now more than a week old, I expect that this information will be on my desk by March 18, 1998 at 12:00 p.m.
Sincerely,
Ben Nighthorse Campbell,
Chairman, Subcommittee on Treasury,
and General Government.
Mr. CAMPBELL. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. MURKOWSKI addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
Mr. MURKOWSKI. I thank the Chair and ask unanimous consent that I may speak for 5, 6 minutes in morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. MURKOWSKI. I thank the Chair.
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