By TChris
A federal law that "prohibits the use of public funds or resources for partisan political activities" didn't stop Bush administration officials from traveling around the country in 2006 to "to lend prestige or bring federal grants to 99 politically endangered Republicans that year."
[A] draft report released by the Democratic majority of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform ... said the trips were freely described as political in subpoenaed e-mails and interviews. A master list prepared at the White House two weeks before the election listed the names and dates of appearances by cabinet secretaries in 73 key congressional districts, all under the heading "Final Push Surrogate Matrix.""This is," the report said, "a gross abuse of the public trust."
Granted, there is often an ambiguous line between politics and policy, and it isn't unusual for presidents to use their office to help members of their political party. The report concludes that the Bush administration's approach was markedly different from that of previous White House occupants. [more ...]
The House committee probed the Clinton effort in the 1990's, at the behest of its then-Republican chairman, but "received no evidence of practices...resembling the coordinated and comprehensive strategy the Bush White House employed to use taxpayer resources to support Republican candidates for office," the report states.
The report traces the abuse of public funds to Sara Taylor, an aide to Karl Rove.
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