As Barack Obama's inauguration nears many have wondered who is fitting the bill for this fifty million dollar extravaganza. An article published in the Wall Street Journal by Christopher Cooper and Brody Mullins uncovers this information. Ten million dollars will be spent using tax payer money while the rest is coming from private donations. The Obama team have said that they are not accepting direct corporate donations, while this is true it doesn't tell the whole story. While their companies may not be allowed to use their funds the CEO's and executives of many of America's biggest corporations have made donations, many of these same companies received government handouts over the past three months. Single donors can make up to fifty thousand dollar contributions, while bundled donations can go up to three hundred thousand dollars. A bundle donation is a donation made by a group of people, more often then not by a companies board of directors. So while the companies themselves aren't giving direct donations they are still contributing to the event. Some of these companies include Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Microsoft and Dreamworks.
Had Obama truly desired to keep the corporations out of the event (as many who voted for him would have liked) they could have set a much lower maximum donation. I don't see why Obama couldn't have raised this money through small donations from individual citizens.
Wall Street Is Big Donor to Inauguration By CHRISTOPHER COOPER and BRODY MULLINS
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