...I'm okay with being REALITY-based.




Tuesday, January 11, 2005
      ( 2:34 PM )
 
Thanks For the Real Estate

The Bush Administration was supposedly raising all private donations to pay for their extravagant "F-U, World" party on the Mall next week for the inaugeration. But not so. Not only are taxpayers who don't even get real representatives in Congress going to pay, it's going to be taken out of their security budget.

D.C. officials said yesterday that the Bush administration is refusing to reimburse the District for most of the costs associated with next week's inauguration, breaking with precedent and forcing the city to divert $11.9 million from homeland security projects.

Federal officials have told the District that it should cover the expenses by using some of the $240 million in federal homeland security grants it has received in the past three years -- money awarded to the city because it is among the places at highest risk of a terrorist attack.

[...]

"We want to make this the best possible event, but not at the expense of D.C. taxpayers and other homeland security priorities," said Gregory M. McCarthy, the mayor's deputy chief of staff. "This is the first time there hasn't been a direct appropriation for the inauguration."

A spokesman for Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, which oversees the District, agreed with the mayor's stance. He called the Bush administration's position "simply not acceptable."

"It's an unfunded mandate of the most odious kind. How can the District be asked to take funds from important homeland security projects to pay for this instead?" said Davis spokesman David Marin.


Fifty Million Dollars to party while the rest of the world drowns, starves or burns. Nice show, Mr. President.

(thanks to maru for the link)

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