Cheney says if Biden wants to diminish veep office that's his call

Washington, Dec 22 (ANI): US Vice President Dick Cheney has challenged vice president-elect Joe Biden's claim that the Bush Administration has amassed too much executive authority, a trend Biden reportedly plans to reverse.

In a blunt interview on "FOX News Sunday" Cheney fired back at Biden for declaring in October: "Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history."

Cheney, who is often called the most powerful vice president in history, said: "If he wants to diminish the office of the vice president, that's obviously his call."

"President-elect Obama will decide what he wants in a vice president and apparently, from the way they're talking about it, he does not expect him to have as consequential a role as I have had during my time," FOX News quoted Cheney, as saying.

Biden bit back, however, in a dueling Sunday morning interview that aired on ABC's "This Week" in which he said he stood by his statements.

"His notion of a unitary executive, meaning that, in time of war, essentially all power, you know, goes to the executive, I think is dead wrong. I think it was mistaken. I think it caused this administration, in adopting that notion, to overstep its constitutional bounds, but, at a minimum, to weaken our standing in the world and weaken our security. I stand by that -- that judgment," Biden said.

Cheney also mocked Biden's grasp of the Constitution.

"He also said that all the powers and responsibilities of the executive branch are laid out in Article I of the Constitution," Cheney said. "Well, they're not. Article I of the Constitution is the one on the legislative branch."

"Joe's been chairman of the Judiciary Committee, a member of the Judiciary Committee in the Senate for 36 years, teaches constitutional law back in Delaware, and can't keep straight which article of the Constitution provides for the legislature and which provides for the executive. So I think I'd write that off as campaign rhetoric. I don't take it seriously," Cheney said. (ANI)