Like it or not, you're helping pay for Gore's campaign...
www.votenet.com/today/story/05_03story1.html Taxpayer paid White House staffers assist Gore campaign
WASHINGTON (AP) _ Top White House talent employed by the taxpayers is helping Democrat Al Gore write his campaign speeches, work up attacks against rival George W. Bush's budget and develop everything from crime-fighting proposals to health and education reforms.
Gene Sperling, head of President Clinton's National Economic Council, and Bruce Reed, chief White House domestic policy adviser, and scores of lower-level aides are lending their expertise _ legally, Gore's presidential campaign notes _ on their own free time.
Good-government watchdogs wince at the overlap.
``These guys are dropping any pretense of a separation between campaign and government. The problem here is of perception and the average American does not expect his or her taxpayer money to go toward Al Gore's campaign,'' said Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity.
_ As Gore flew to Atlanta Tuesday for an address on crime, campaign aides referred reporters' questions on the meat of that speech _ a $500 million rehabilitation program for prisoners and parolees _ to Reed and helpfully distributed his telephone number at the White House.
_ Sperling and his White House staff crunched numbers for a 15-page indictment of Gore's Republican opponent's tax-cut and spending plans that concluded, on page 6, that Texas Gov. ``Bush would need to make (spending) cuts of nearly 40 percent to balance the budget.''
_ Sperling, along with former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and former White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles, reviewed drafts and gave Gore input on the major economic address he gave last week in New York, where he assailed Bush's agenda as reckless.
_ Sarah Bianchi, who transferred to the Nashville, Tenn.-based campaign last month, worked during the past year on Gore's health and Medicare proposals from her desk at the White House.
_ On a campaign trip in February, reporters were handed ``Gore 2000'' press releases bearing the stamp of the official fax machine in Gore's White House communications office. Campaign spokesman Chris Lehane later called it ``an inadvertent mistake by a junior staffer.''
``There's a lot of this that goes on in politics. But these folks take it to a whole new level _ the Lincoln bedroom comes to mind _ in using public property for campaign ends,'' said Lewis.
Gore campaign spokesman Doug Hattaway underscored that official aides may legally free-lance as long as they clock 40 hours of work on official business each week and do not use government resources, such as computers and phones.
``Anyone who helps out works strictly according to the rules and we're grateful for them,'' Hattaway said.
Ari Fleischer, campaign spokesman for Bush, who has his gubernatorial staff at his disposal, declined to make an issue of the muddied line between Gore's official and campaign resources.
``The issue raised is not who writes the vice president's material but what the vice president is saying ... negative attacks that are part and parcel of old-style politics,'' said Fleischer.
Bush sometimes calls on state officials to do his political bidding. Last week, his campaign dispatched Comptroller Carole Keeton Rylander to a Gore appearance in Dallas, where she defended the governor's education record to reporters traveling with the vice president.
Gore has recently begun to move a number of his White House aides, like Bianchi and communications director Laura Quinn, to campaign or Democratic National Committee payrolls, freeing them up to work full-time on politics.
Among other legal perks of incumbency, Gore uses the White House travel office to handle the massive logistics of hotel, plane and rental car arrangements for his campaign trips.
www.votenet.com/today/story/05_03story1.html Taxpayer paid White House staffers assist Gore campaign
WASHINGTON (AP) _ Top White House talent employed by the taxpayers is helping Democrat Al Gore write his campaign speeches, work up attacks against rival George W. Bush's budget and develop everything from crime-fighting proposals to health and education reforms.
Gene Sperling, head of President Clinton's National Economic Council, and Bruce Reed, chief White House domestic policy adviser, and scores of lower-level aides are lending their expertise _ legally, Gore's presidential campaign notes _ on their own free time.
Good-government watchdogs wince at the overlap.
``These guys are dropping any pretense of a separation between campaign and government. The problem here is of perception and the average American does not expect his or her taxpayer money to go toward Al Gore's campaign,'' said Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity.
_ As Gore flew to Atlanta Tuesday for an address on crime, campaign aides referred reporters' questions on the meat of that speech _ a $500 million rehabilitation program for prisoners and parolees _ to Reed and helpfully distributed his telephone number at the White House.
_ Sperling and his White House staff crunched numbers for a 15-page indictment of Gore's Republican opponent's tax-cut and spending plans that concluded, on page 6, that Texas Gov. ``Bush would need to make (spending) cuts of nearly 40 percent to balance the budget.''
_ Sperling, along with former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and former White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles, reviewed drafts and gave Gore input on the major economic address he gave last week in New York, where he assailed Bush's agenda as reckless.
_ Sarah Bianchi, who transferred to the Nashville, Tenn.-based campaign last month, worked during the past year on Gore's health and Medicare proposals from her desk at the White House.
_ On a campaign trip in February, reporters were handed ``Gore 2000'' press releases bearing the stamp of the official fax machine in Gore's White House communications office. Campaign spokesman Chris Lehane later called it ``an inadvertent mistake by a junior staffer.''
``There's a lot of this that goes on in politics. But these folks take it to a whole new level _ the Lincoln bedroom comes to mind _ in using public property for campaign ends,'' said Lewis.
Gore campaign spokesman Doug Hattaway underscored that official aides may legally free-lance as long as they clock 40 hours of work on official business each week and do not use government resources, such as computers and phones.
``Anyone who helps out works strictly according to the rules and we're grateful for them,'' Hattaway said.
Ari Fleischer, campaign spokesman for Bush, who has his gubernatorial staff at his disposal, declined to make an issue of the muddied line between Gore's official and campaign resources.
``The issue raised is not who writes the vice president's material but what the vice president is saying ... negative attacks that are part and parcel of old-style politics,'' said Fleischer.
Bush sometimes calls on state officials to do his political bidding. Last week, his campaign dispatched Comptroller Carole Keeton Rylander to a Gore appearance in Dallas, where she defended the governor's education record to reporters traveling with the vice president.
Gore has recently begun to move a number of his White House aides, like Bianchi and communications director Laura Quinn, to campaign or Democratic National Committee payrolls, freeing them up to work full-time on politics.
Among other legal perks of incumbency, Gore uses the White House travel office to handle the massive logistics of hotel, plane and rental car arrangements for his campaign trips.
Did you hear about the phones being rigged as not to tell who is making what call from where so it cannot be traced back? Klinton had it done in Govs mansion and is believed to have done same as soon as moving in the White House.