Even if you haven't personally spent a dime yet for a ticket, T-shirt or souvenir trinket, you're helping Atlanta pay for the 1996 Olympic Games - through your federal tax dollars.
Though the Games themselves are privately funded from sources including television rights, corporate sponsorships and ticket sales, the federal government is pitching in tens of millions of dollars' worth of services that are crucial to their success.The biggest expenditures:
- $35 million for security, carried out mainly by the military.
- $28 million for buses and other transportation assistance.
Federal agencies also will be involved in trash pickup, recycling, testing energy technology, bicycle trail construction and environmental protection, among other areas.
An aide to Vice President Al Gore, whose office is coordinating the federal government's Olympic activities, said he did not know the total amount of money the various agencies are spending. Some estimates have put the figure as high as $92 million.
The state of Georgia is spending more than $150 million on public buildings that will be used during the Games, though no state tax money is going directly to theOlympics. Atlanta and other local governments are spending about $90 million on projects related to the Olympics.
Olympics officials and their supporters in Congress defend the federal spending as necessary for a national event that will attract thousands of foreign visitors. Though the Olympics are in Atlanta, they say, they really are America's games.
"We as a nation have never been able to achieve perfect symmetry between paying taxes and receiving federal benefits," said Jack Quinn, Gore's chief of staff. "You in Georgia pay tax dollars to build roads in Idaho, and there's no getting around that.
"It's part and parcel of being a nation."
Sen. Paul Coverdell, R-Ga., an ardent supporter of the security expenditures, agreed.
"You have a world event in your nation, you accept responsibility for those visitors," Coverdell said.
The federal spending has drawn some harsh criticism, notably from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who has for two years tried to force Atlanta to repay the federal government if the Olympics turn a profit.
But McCain has been unable to build up much steam for his cause. His most recent Olympic bill failed in the Senate last month by a whopping 80-20 vote.
Such a vote flies in the face of efforts to rein in the federal budget, said Pete Sapp, spokesman for the National Taxpayers Union.
Sapp said much of the federal spending for the Games is spread out and hidden deep within the thicket of agency budgets.
"There are things we should spend public money on, but they shouldn't lie and say they're not doing it," said Melissa Metcalfe, head of the public interest group Common Cause in Georgia.
Billy Payne, the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games president, sees no contradiction between the federal spending and his pledge to put on a privately financed Games.
"Inside the venues is our responsibility," Payne said. Other areas, only government can handle.