Why Bush Is Stopping at Home Depot
Bush Rewards Generous GOP Donor with Visit to Maryland Store on Friday; Energy Bill Includes $48 Million Tax Break that Benefits the Giant Retailer
WASHINGTON, D.C. – President Bush will make two stops in Maryland on Friday. The first is an exclusive, big-ticket fundraiser in Baltimore, where he is expected to add another million dollars to his massive campaign war chest. Then he’ll deliver a speech on the economy to workers at a Home Depot in nearby Halethorpe.
Bush’s appearance at the home improvement behemoth has left the locals a bit baffled. On Wednesday, The Sun in Baltimore ran a story on the president’s upcoming visit to the town of 20,000 in southwest Baltimore County. Titled "A Presidential Mystery," the article confirmed Bush’s itinerary but concluded that "nobody seems to know why" he’s going to Halethorpe’s Home Depot.
Research by Public Citizen suggests the president’s visit is yet another way to reward the nation’s second-largest retailer for its generosity to the Bush campaign and the Republican Party. Home Depot employees and their families have given $1.5 million to the GOP since 1999, according to data provided to Public Citizen by the Center for Responsive Politics.
During that time, no candidate has benefited from Home Depot’s largesse more than Bush. The total includes $907,950 in mostly "soft money" donations to the Republican National Committee before such giving was outlawed by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA). So far this year, Home Depot employees and the company political action committee have contributed $31,000 to the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign.
"Every time Bush has a fundraiser, he also schedules a purportedly public event to pass the cost onto the taxpayers," said Frank Clemente, director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch. "These carefully staged performances before a captive audience of workers are a sham. The president has managed to turn policy pronouncements into free PR for his most generous political supporters."
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Note: Home Depot's founder, Bernard Marcus, is on the Board of Directors of ChoicePoint
