Who takes home the money to pay for food on their table?
The money doesn't get burned up -- it goes to people who earned it.
I doubt that the security costs for Clinton's inauguration were much less. The media exagerrates everything negative towards the President.
He isn't asking for anything unusual. The same swearing-in ceremony, parade, and balls were done for last three presidents.
Whining about this is silly, and is designed to make Republicans apologetic. Please remember Clinton's inauguration, when there was a decided air of gloating and excess.
I refuse to think we should scale this back. Kerry would never have done so if he had won.
DC pays as it should. They received 250 million bucks from HSA for SECURITY If they can't afford it then the DC government needs to be audited post haste.
WASHINGTON - President Bush's second inauguration will cost tens of millions of dollars $40 million alone in private donations for the balls, parade and other invitation-only parties. With that kind of money, what could you buy?
Whatever I want to buy, including a forty million dollar inauguration...why is it yours or anyone else's business?
"But there are also $17.3 million security costs of the inaugural. Who pays?"
Elections are pretty expensive too...should we get rid of them as well?
Get a grip, it's a shining example to the world of the orderly transition of power that's at the heart of this nation...celebrate it and quit bitching about it.
"But there are also $17.3 million security costs of the inaugural. Who pays?"
Uh, that comes out of the $240 MILLION in funds the federal govt has given DC for Homeland Security in the past 3 years. Frankly, most of the security people working on January 20th would be working whether there was an inauguration or not. The overtime pay will put more bucks into their pockets, and this is a bad thing because.....?
PS: What were the security costs for the democrat convention in Boston? Who paid for that? And what did we get out of it?
Oh that? Its chump change. Its not like the money to protect our President is being wasted. Even the libs are not complaining about the public expenses portion of the Inaugural. Now THAT's funny!
The costs would have been lower if the dim wits weren't calling for actions on the streets demonstrating against the inauguration that are potentially dangerous.