WASHINGTON - Vice-President Dick Cheney blamed Congress for failing to bail out the auto industry, saying the White House was forced to step in to save U.S. car companies.
In an interview broadcast Sunday, Cheney said the economy is in such bad shape that the car companies might not have survived without the $17.4 billion in emergency loans that President George W. Bush approved Friday.
"The president decided specifically that he wanted to try to deal with it and not preside over the collapse of the automobile industry just as he goes out of office," Cheney said in an interview broadcast on "Fox News Sunday."
Legislators "had ample opportunity to deal with this issue and they failed," Cheney said. "The president had no choice but to step in."
Congress rejected an auto bailout package after many Republicans and some Democrats opposed it. Some said U.S. auto companies would be better off if they were required reorganize through bankruptcy.
Cheney leaves office Jan. 20 as one of the most powerful, if unpopular, vice-presidents in recent history. He played a key role in many of Bush's major policy decisions and, in the interview, was unapologetic in his review of the past eight years.
He staunchly defended the administration's use of executive power in the fight against terrorism and disagreed with calls to limit presidential authority. "If you think about what Abraham Lincoln did during the Civil War, what FDR did during World War II. They went far beyond anything we've done in a global war on terror," the vice-president contended.
Cheney said he was unconcerned about polls showing him as unpopular, saying that people who spend too much time reading polls "shouldn't serve in these jobs."
He offered a sombre assessment of the economic challenges facing the incoming administration of Barack Obama, saying there is a growing consensus that government action will be needed next year to help revive the economy. But he declined to judge the economic stimulus plan that Obama is considering because the program has yet to be announced.
Obama and his team are working to come up with details of a plan to pump up the economy with $850 billion or more in government spending over the next few years. Their goal is to create or save three million jobs in the next two years.
"I'd want to see what they're going to spend it on," Cheney said. "There usually are fairly significant differences between we Republicans and the Democrats on how you stimulate the economy."
Cheney, also speaking about the future of the Republican party, the hunt for Osama bin Laden, and the role for his successor, Joe Biden, said he:
-- expects the Republican party to rebound from this year's election defeats, but is unsure whether Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will lead the comeback as the party's nominee for president in 2012. "I don't think she has any kind of lock on that," Cheney said of this year's vice- presidential candidate. "She'll have to go out and earn it just as anybody else would have to."
-- thinks bin Laden is alive but questioned whether he is still effectively running al-Qaida. "He's been holed up in a way where he's not even been communicating and there are questions about whether or not he's even running the operation," Cheney said.
"Capturing Osama bin Laden is something we clearly would love to do" before leaving office, Cheney said. But he said it has been more important to stop terrorist attacks against the United States.
-- Biden has not asked for any advice about being vice-president. Biden has called Cheney "the most dangerous vice-president we've had probably in American history." Cheney strongly disagreed with the assertion and said he doesn't think Obama will give Biden as consequential a role as Cheney has had under Bush.
-- disagreed with the firing of defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld in late 2006, though he praised Rumsfeld's successor, Robert Gates, who will stay on as Obama's defence secretary. "It wasn't my decision to make," Cheney said of firing Rumsfeld. "The president doesn't always take my advice."
-- did not regret using an obscenity beginning with "f" in an exchange with Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) on the Senate floor in June 2004. "I thought he merited it at the time," Cheney said with a chuckle in the interview. "And we've since, I think, patched over that wound and we're civil to one another now."
