Barbara Boxer: “I stand here today to call on Vice President Dick Cheney to immediately open his records of his secret energy task force…”

“I stand here today to call on Vice President Dick Cheney to immediately open his records of his secret energy task force meetings and tell the American people the truth about who attended those meetings. The administration needs to stop fighting this wasteful lawsuit. It has cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, that belong to the taxpayers. And it has consumed an enormous amount of time with the Justice Department and other agencies. Today the case is to be heard across the street at the Supreme Court. It is not too late for the Vice President to come clean. Just tell the American people who attended the secret meetings he held before he issued his energy policy which took the form of this very expensive, beautiful-colored brochure which has, for example, this picture of 'Energy for a New Century,' and it shows an oil rig in the ocean. By the way, that is not exactly the energy of the future. The time has come for the Vice President to stop the stonewalling. Simply tell the truth. Who did he meet with in preparing our Nation's energy plan? First, the American people have the right to know. The last I checked, this country was a free country. It is a country where there is access to information for the people. We pay the salaries of our President, our Vice President, our Senators, our House Members. Unless it is a question of the highest national security, the people have a right to know how their money is being spent or misspent.”