Posted on 11/04/2011 1:39:14 PM PDT by tobyhill
The White House on Friday all but refused to turn over the documents House Republicans have subpoenaed on bankrupt solar firm Solyndra, firing off a letter saying the request would put an "unreasonable burden on the president's ability to meet his constitutional duties."
The feisty response appears to set up a clash between congressional investigators and the White House over the sprawling probe into Solyndra's finances and the administration's involvement in the decision to provide the struggling company a $528 million loan with taxpayer money.
White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, in her letter, scolded GOP lawmakers for demanding more documents, noting the Obama administration has already turned over 85,000 pages of documents in the course of their investigation. Without explicitly refusing to comply with the subpoena, Ruemmler repeatedly described the order as "overbroad."
"The Committee's extremely broad request for documents -- now a subpoena -- is a significant intrusion on Executive Branch interests," she wrote, saying she can only conclude the subpoena was "driven more by partisan politics than a legitimate effort to conduct a responsible investigation."
Though the White House has turned over thousands of documents, Republicans say the administration has not provided everything they've requested. The House Energy and Commerce Committee voted Thursday to subpoena, and the subpoenas went out late Thursday to the White House and office of the vice president.
"Unfortunately, we had to take this step after the White House has continued to slow walk the production of documents necessary for this investigation by only releasing selected documents and records," Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., chairman of the House panel investigating the matter, said in a statement.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Unfortunately it looks as if this is headed for the black hole of a Separation of Powers dispute.
Nothing Congress can do about it except pursue impeachment....and we all know THAT ain’t happening!
Translation: "It's cutting into my time for golf, pickup basketball, listening to hip hop, watching TV, and fundraising. Besides, it's your job to cooperate with me, not mine to cooperate with you!"
That means it must disrupt his tee times and fundraising trips.
If Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon had a love child....
They mean the president's ability to meet his tee off time or the president's ability to meet his plane for the vacation trip.
Time for the military to kick in the doors on Obama’s hidey-hole...
I must disagree with your “translation”. Mine is:
“It would put an unreasonable burden on my effort to hide from the American public what the hell is going on behind the scenes.”
Imagine if this “answer” was given by an (R) President to a (D) Congress. 15.7 on the 10 point Richter scale.
His constitutional duty is to turn them over. There is nothing top secret to give up. It is illegal to NOT turn them over.
Where the hell is that 500 million BARRY!!! IT’S OUR MONEY!!!
Fine. Contempt Of Congress!
“a significant intrusion on Executive Branch interests”
Ah, good, old-fashioned Executive Privilege. Popularly associated with Nixon, its origins are probably as deep as the Republic itself. But in its current form it goes back to Truman and his newfangled Cold War National Security State. It never did have much to do with national security, or if it did those instances never became famous. Mostly, it’s used to do just what it says, maintain the executive’s privileges. And why would he want to give those up? We all loves our perks.
How many pages were shredded? How long does it take to read 85,000 pages? 85,000 pages is about 2,800 reams of paper. That's enough paper to fill my house.
Dang, just the paper and printing cost along is way too expensive. 0pansy and is ilk are out of control.
Hahahahaha. Since Zer0 is clearly NOT a NBC, he could easily handle his responsibilities and resign.
The list, ping
Let me know if you would like to be on or off the ping list
The SCOTUS bitch slapped Clintoon time and again when they tried to avoid providing docs over his many scandals.
In Obama’s opinion, the US Treasury is just his re-election campaign stash. If you can’t use taxpayer money to win friends and buy votes, what’s the point of being President anyway?
The Republicans need to take the offense without fear of being called names. They need to state to the people of this Nation that enough is enough of wasting our tax dollars on this green crap in which one after another, after another of these Obama DOE backed, taxpayer funded green pipe dream companies goes belly up. Start kickin butt, and kick especially the environmentalcases square in their....double them over. Make them know we aren’t going to sit back and take their BS anymore.
The Congress, the House is there to look after our interests, actually the whole damned government is there for the express purpose of looking out for our interests, therefore there is no reason the House cannot get belligerant with Obama whose proven himself a worthy target of belligerance.
HaHaHaHaHa...I don't care who you are, that thar' is funny!
The ONLY republican with a pair is Michele Bachmann and they've already Alinski'ed her. He will never turn over a meaningful document - never.
SCOTUS here we come............................
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