President-elect Barack Obama plans to bar special interests from contributing to his inaugural festivities and limit the amount he accepts to $50,000 per donor, the most stringent restrictions in the memory of campaign finance experts.
Mr. Obama’s newly formed inaugural committee said Tuesday that it would not accept money from corporations, political action committees, people who are currently registered with the federal government as lobbyists, those who are not citizens of the United States or registered foreign agents.
Campaign finance experts said that to their knowledge, the limits were tighter than for any previous inauguration, both in dollar amounts and in who will be permitted to give. Donations for earlier inaugurations have carried dollar limits, but they were higher — up to $250,000 for individuals in the case of George W. Bush, who allowed corporations to give more than that.
The restrictions are in keeping with Mr. Obama’s pledge to curb the influence of money in government, and signal his intention to encourage broader public participation at the inauguration than in the past.
The inauguration, on Jan. 20, is expected to draw more people than any in history. The largest previous inauguration is believed to have been that of President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, attended by an estimated 1.2 million people.
Mr. Obama’s committee has not put a price tag on the inauguration and is still wrestling with an array of details, not least the question of how much to pare the festivities in recognition of the nation’s economic crisis and the serious tasks ahead.
Mr. Obama, who has been preoccupied with the economic woes as he prepares to step into the presidency, formed his inaugural committee only in recent days and announced its five co-chairmen on Tuesday.
They are William M. Daley, commerce secretary under President Bill Clinton; Penny S. Pritzker, finance chairwoman of Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign; John W. Rogers Jr., founder and chief executive of the mutual fund company Ariel Investments; Patrick G. Ryan, a Republican who is in charge of Chicago’s efforts to host the 2016 Summer Olympics; and Julianna Smoot, the Obama campaign’s national finance director.
Although the cost of the inaugural is as yet unclear, Linda Douglass, a spokeswoman for the committee, said Mr. Obama expected to incur expenses that past presidents had not, because he wanted to make as many events as possible accessible to the public.
“We’re going to explore all kinds of creative ways to open this up to the public, everything from the swearing-in to the events,” Ms. Douglass said, adding that the celebration would include activities elsewhere in the country.
“This inauguration is more than just a celebration of an election,” she said. “This is an event that can be used to inspire and galvanize the public to act. That is what we’re aiming for.”
The committee is also working with federal officials to open to those attending the inauguration as much as possible of the Mall, which stretches two miles from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial. The section east of the Washington Monument has traditionally been used as a staging area for marching bands and others who participate in the inaugural parade, but they may be moved elsewhere this time to accommodate the crowds, most of whom will have to view the swearing-in ceremony and the parade on JumboTron screens.
In modern times, inaugurations have been financed by a combination of public and private money. Most recently, in 2005, Mr. Bush spent a record $42.3 million on his inaugural events, most of it collected from corporations and executives. That money was directed mostly toward festivities, including fireworks, inaugural balls, the parade and a concert on the Mall.
But the federal and District of Columbia governments also spent a combined $115.5 million, most of it for security, the swearing-in ceremony and cleanup; the biggest expense by far, $84 million, was to compensate federal workers for the holiday.
In barring lobbyists from contributing, Mr. Obama is continuing a practice he began with his campaign and applied as well to his transition, in which contribution limits are $5,000.
“Given his policies during the campaign, this is as consistent as you can write these rules and still raise the tens of millions of dollars that modern inaugurations have required,” said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks the influence of money in politics.
Ms. Krumholz said she believed that Mr. Obama’s limits for the inauguration were stricter than those for any previous one. But, she noted, there are ways around the limits. Couples can give as much as $100,000 rather than $50,000, which itself is more than 10 times as high as the $4,600 maximum that individuals could donate for the primary and general-election campaigns together. And corporate executives can give as individuals, though their companies cannot. Moreover, many people lobby without being registered as lobbyists.
In any event, the Obama team plans to call upon the hundreds of thousands of supporters who gave small-dollar amounts to the campaign, though it is anybody’s guess to what extent they will contribute this time.
“Paying for other people to party in Washington doesn’t seem like something they might go for,” Ms. Krumholz said.
One of the biggest unknowns for donors is whether they will get tickets to Mr. Obama’s swearing-in ceremony. There are a total of 240,000 tickets, most of them controlled by Congress, and already the requests have vastly exceeded the supply.http://my.barackobama.com/page/dashboard/public/gGWdjc
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment