On the campaign trail, Governor Mitt Romney cites his efforts to rescue the Olympic by luring new corporate sponsors and fix a huge budget shortfall. Some recently discovered information may shed light on just how Romney helped fill the financial hole the Salt Lake Olympic organizers put themselves in.
The GAO (General Accounting Office) had initial planned for a budget of about 1.3 billion dollars in federal assistance to the 2002 winter Olympics, but before the opening ceremonies even began the operations was in a deep financial hole putting the entire Olympics in danger. The initial budget for the 2002 Olympics called for more then two times the amount of the 1996 Olympics games.
- 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles -- $75 Million
- 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta -- $609 Million
- 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City -- $2.7 Billion
While Mitt Romney claims that his business experience was a key attribute in turning the Olympic planning around it may have had more to do with his political connections and influence peddling. Overstating his corporate experience and understated the government's financial assistance.
Mitt Romney lobbied congress hard for federal tax dollars effectively provided huge subsidies for each ticket sold, and that the largest corporate sponsorships were in place before he arrived. Once taking over the operations for the Olympic games, Governor Romney began to use his political leverage and relationship with Senator Bill Bennett of Utah to secure $1.5 Billion in tax payer dollars to bailout the failed Olympic operations.
On Sept. 19, 2000, Senator John McCain rose in the Senate to rail against what he called the "staggering" sums that the federal government planned to spend to help Salt Lake City stage the 2002 Winter Olympics.
"The American taxpayer is being shaken down to the tune of nearly a billion and a half dollars," “I think it is a disgrace,” McCain said, who, along with U.S. Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., asked the government agency to investigate the escalating expenditures for hosting the Olympic games in American cities.
“But this is a logical extension of what you get when you start pork-barrel spending.”
At the time Mitt Romney defended the request for additional federal dollars and made no mention in a portions of the profits from games going back to the federal government to help recover the costs.
“Recognizing that our government spends billions of dollars to maintain wartime capability, it is entirely appropriate to invest several hundred millions to promote peace,” Mitt Romney, the president of the Salt Lake City Organizing Committee, wrote in a letter in August to the GAO.
"I'm expecting the funding we need to host the Games," he said. "I'm quite confident."
Mitt Romney never explained how the project was costing the federal tax payer twice as originally budgeted our who benefited from the waste.
McCain's outrage put him at odds not only with Romney but with Sen. Robert F. Bennett, the Utah Republican who sat on the appropriations committee and who personally led the fight for federal aid to the Olympics. No discussion was give to the potential conflict of interest with Sen. Bennett serving on this committing and working with Mitt Romney to lobby the committee for a bailout.
In October 1999, Bennett took to the Senate floor to condemn a claim on McCain's website that called an allocation of $2.2 million to improve Salt Lake City sewers "a direct result of unlimited contributions from special interests." McCain's staff had found the sewer aid in an emergency appropriation to fund U.S. military operations in Kosovo.
With the final cost of the 2002 Winter Olympic games costing the tax payer 2.7 billion dollars and Mitt Romney personally lobbing congress for nearly most $1.5 billion in bailout money to help turn the Olympics around one must ask if this is that type of influence peddling the country needs in the Republican presidential candidate. The 2002 Winter Olympics profited over $100 Millions and there is no clear understand as to who received those profits.
