Fortunately the Committee has not just the video of the hearing itself, but also the testimony of folks on both sides of the unitary executive issue--from Heritage to the Administrator of OIRA to Rick Melberth, policy director of regulatory policy at OMBWatch, which is where I learned of the hearing (if these committees have a mechanism whereby you can get daily notices of hearings, I haven't figured out how to do that yet).
The OMBWatch folks also provide a summary of the testimony given by most who were present at the hearing under the neutral title: OMB INTERFERENCE UNDER SCRUTINY IN CONGRESS. One thing that I noticed in the article, and I am not sure if this was deliberate or accidental, but for the first time I noticed a hint that what the Bush administration has been doing via their unilateral activities, despite defending as unitarian, might not be at all. They write: "Under the unitary executive theory, President Bush and conservative constitutional scholars have argued that the president has complete control over implementation of federal law and can ignore the input of Congress in doing so. Bush has used this rationale to dramatically expand the use of presidential signing statements and to ignore the opinions of Congress in his conduct of the war in Iraq." See what I mean? Before they would have simply stated: "Under the unitary executive theory..."
One area where you have seen a great deal of consistency regarding adherence to the unitary executive theory and presidents of either Party has been in the area of centralizing rulemaking authority inside the White House. For instance, the Reagan and Clinton administrations both issued powerful executive orders that pulled the executive branch agencies closer to the White House than the Congress, and to be honest, those who hold the view that the president might have an important oversight role but it is Congress that tells these agency heads what they should and should not do are anachronistic. Their days ended long ago. The Carter administration beefed up the muscle of OMB by creating the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) and every president after took advantage of it.
The Clinton administration was equally zealous when it came to protecting the president's position as the chief administrator. For instance, Elena Kagan, now the Dean of Harvard Law School, but once a SAO in the Clinton White House wrote:
When Congress delegates discretionary authority to an agency official, because that official is a subordinate of the president, it is so granting discretionary authority to the President.
It is good to see the Congress continuing to conduct oversight and challenge the president regarding his interpretation of his power compared to the other constitutional institutions. Now if I can figure out a way to learn about it when it happens so my news isn't old news!
