Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

Editorial: Inauguration excess better spent elsewhere
By Editorial Board
The Daily Athenaeum, West Virginia U.
January 16, 2009

The economy is in chaos, bailouts are afoot and hopeful senators are vying for seats left and right.

But through all of our country's various issues, we still can never quite resist a good party.

In 2008, the country was seized with the desire for change -- a desire that led to the landslide election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States.

But in 2009, change doesn't seem like a top priority. In fact, we seem much more concerned about the biggest, best and, unsurprisingly, most expensive way to ring in our next leader.

President Bush's inauguration in 2005 cost about $40 million for security, events and more and reportedly attracted about 300,000 people.

For Obama's inauguration celebration, Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty has estimated that it will cost the city some $47 million while Maryland and Virginia have estimated their outlay at $12 million and $16 million respectively, according to the Association for Financial Professionals.

On Jan. 20, between 1 and 2 million people are expected to pour into Washington, a city of 400,000, for the inauguration, some paying tens of thousands of dollars a night for a hotel room and to attend lavish inaugural balls.

Indeed, excess has always been a part of America's DNA. America: the land of plenty, so on and so forth.

But over the years it's become a defining characteristic of our nation -- one that resonates globally. So far, it doesn't seem like we care too much.

Though flippantly spending this much money on one evening during an economic crisis seems ludicrous enough, we've managed to be even more selfish: by kicking around Washington's homeless.

According to Michael O'Neill of the National Coalition for the Homeless, up to 1,200 people live in the security zone, including Pennsylvania Avenue, the grand boulevard that the inaugural parade will march down.

"I don't fault the people who are putting this together for trying to make it a safe event because if there are a couple of million people crammed into the middle of Washington, it could be a target for something," former homeless man Dave Pirtle said. "But you can do it and work with the community. We are showing our priorities as a nation: throwing a multi-million dollar party while trying to shovel our poor and our homeless under the carpet."

We couldn't agree more.

Though this is an exciting and unprecedented time in America's history, we need to focus less on the festivites and more on fixing what's broken in our country. Jobs are disappearing, scholarships are growing increasingly scarce and for many, so is hope.

But if we keep focused on bettering our country, maybe our government will get the memo.

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