Inauguration: Money

The MSM has been touting the $11,900,000 that D.C. will shell out as an unfunded mandate. I'm sure the city won't recuperate all that money, but what isn't being said is all the money D.C. will get in revenue. Consider: D.C. receives nine percent taxation on off-premise liquor; ten percent on restaurant meals, on-premise liquor, and rental cars; and fourteen and a half percent on hotel rooms. That's not including alcoholic beverage taxes on distribution and taxes on cigarettes, and other taxes associated with tourism that I don't know about. Now, I saw quite a few people at the Inauguration (the high estimate is 750,000 and the low is 100,00). We all had to eat and sleep somewhere. (I, for one, certainly spent enough money to help out the municpality!) And plenty of people were paying those alcoholic beverage taxes. So while the city doesn't get money from the federal government to pay for the Inauguration, the federal government also doesn't receive the revenue generated by the festivities.

Cities routinely lose money on the Olympics, but they are always vying for a chance to host them. Why? My guess is because being the host generates goodwill which will continue to create tourism dollars well into the future. I imagine the same is true of the Inauguration. D.C. may lose immediate money, but it won't be the entire sum that the press is reporting, and they will indubitably get more of it back long into the future.