MARCH 7, 2013 BY ED MORRISSEY
The decision to close the White House to visitors after the budget sequester took effect is a classic example of the “Washington Monument” strategy to fight budget cuts (similar to the “fireman first” strategy). The first person to try this was George Hartzog, director of the National Parks Service, who in 1969 closed the Washington Monument and other attractions in response to a cut in his budget from Congress. It didn’t work out so well for Hartzog, who got fired — but Congress did restore the funding.
In this case, though, the optics might not play as well in favor of the gameplayers. First, as ABC and the Weekly Standard report, the cuts that are supposedly prompting this as a necessity are a reduction of $84 million in a $1.66 billion Secret Service budget, representing just a 5.2% reduction in an annual budget thatincreased $150 million from FY2011′s $1.511 billion. Second, as it turns out, $84 million buys a lot of White House tours: -go to the link-
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