Wash Post: DC Charged for Inaugural Expenses

[Moonwatcher]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63896-2005Jan10.html

U.S. Tells D.C. to Pay Inaugural Expenses;
Other Security Projects Would Lose $11.9 Million

By Spencer S. Hsu, Washington Post Staff Writer

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.

But that grant money is earmarked for other security needs, Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) said in a Dec. 27 letter to Office of Management and Budget Director Joshua B. Bolten and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. Williams's office released the letter yesterday.

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A spokesman for Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, which oversees the District ... 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.

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Deadbeats.

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. Bush likes privatization, except for, er, private affairs, I guess.

[Moderator]

2. duplicate topic, please discuss here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1140038