ow Rove Directed Federal Assets for GOP Gains
Bush Adviser's Effort to Promote the President and His Allies Was Unprecedented in Its Reach
By John Solomon, Alec MacGillis and Sarah Cohen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, August 19, 2007; Page A01
Thirteen months before President Bush was reelected, chief strategist Karl Rove summoned political appointees from around the government to the Old Executive Office Building. The subject of the Oct. 1, 2003, meeting was "asset deployment," and the message was clear:
The staging of official announcements, high-visibility trips and declarations of federal grants had to be carefully coordinated with the White House political affairs office to ensure the maximum promotion of Bush's reelection agenda and the Republicans in Congress who supported him, according to documents and some of those involved in the effort.
If you are also going to start looking under the covers of this Administration I would suggest asking for the time sheets of the advance teams that run all of these events. Anyone to guess how many hours of Hatch Act violations one would find? See these Advance folks that are not in the Office of Advance, and there are not too many of them since Poppa Bush cut the White House budget on his way out of office and to handicap Clinton's ability to travel. So unless the budget for advance has gone up the Advance Team is being assembled with folks that are working at and in various agencies or private companies. One they are assigned to a team and a trip they are on the Executive branch's payroll.
Where this get tricky is if they are being warehoused at an agency and then put on a trip. When this happens they have to put in for vacation time at their existing agency or face breaking the Hatch Act. The trips then get real tricky when these trips have both official and private events. Because the reimbursement off the official White House detail has to be covered by the Host of the private events. This then has to be squared with now the official staff and these extra advance staffers are accounted for in the cost breakdown and reimbursements.
This is been a problem every since the reduction in the White House budget and I have not heard it being fixed so who is paying and who is working and when. Just a few questions I would ask if I was a reporter.
Technorati Tags: Advance, Rove, White House, Travel,
