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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: miraje who wrote (426136)	7/12/2003 6:43:48 PM
From: Skywatcher	Respond to of 769670

In this case it IS this government.... but there is no doubt each administration has been guilty of this ok? CC

To: miraje who wrote (426136)	7/12/2003 6:55:05 PM
From: Skywatcher	Respond to of 769670

And here goes Bush again...spending HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES DOLLARS FOR CAMPAIGNING GAO: Bush Used HHS Budget for Nat'l Events Fri Jul 11, 9:18 PM ET Add White House - AP to My Yahoo! By LAURA MECKLER, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - The Bush administration spent hundreds of thousands of dollars from its health and welfare budget to stage presidential events around the country last year — most of which coincided with campaign appearances for Republican candidates. A report released Friday by the General Accounting Office (news - web sites), Congress' investigative arm, identified 15 trips where the White House asked the Department of Health and Human Services (news - web sites) to pick up the tab. Agreements reached between the White House and HHS allowed for charges totaling about $523,000. So far, the White House has sent HHS bills for eight of the 15 trips totaling just over $250,000. The GAO could not find invoices or other records to explain specifically how the money was spent. The events were staged on a range of topics that HHS handles: bioterrorism, welfare, fitness, Medicare and prescription drugs. The GAO found that nine of the 15 coincided with political events for Republicans, including gubernatorial campaigns for Scott McCallum in Wisconsin, Bob Taft in Ohio, Jeb Bush in Florida and Mark Sanford in South Carolina. When the president travels for both official and campaign business, taxpayers generally share the cost with campaign committees. Rep. Charles Rangel (news, bio, voting record), D-N.Y., who requested the report, said an agency charged with helping the sick and the poor should not be indirectly funding politics. "No one challenges that the president should travel whenever and wherever he wants," Rangel said in a statement. "But if the goal of the trip is partisan politics, then he should charge the cost to his campaign committee, not the taxpayer." Fourteen of the 15 events were in 2002 before the November election; one was in January 2003. HHS spokesman Bill Pierce said the taxpayers were in no way funding politics. "All of these events were in support of major administration policy initiatives," he said. "Instead of just sitting here in Washington, D.C., it's very important to go out and actually talk to the folks in the various states about these things." Rangel asked the GAO for comparable numbers during the Clinton administration. The GAO found that during President Clinton (news - web sites)'s entire second term, the White House stages 37 events for which HHS was charged about $101,000. But the GAO said records were incomplete and there could have been others during Clinton's term. The GAO inquiry did not examine whether other agencies have paid for similar trips during the Bush or Clinton years.