Carney Contradicts Obama: "We Had To Cancel The Tours"
MR. CARNEY: Well, Ed, I think I just answered that question and said that the Secret Service made the decision about its budget and to withdraw personnel from tours.
Q Right, and then you said it was --
MR. CARNEY: We had to cancel the tours. It’s our job to cancel the tours. They cannot cancel them so -- because we run -- this is not a tour of the Secret Service building. It’s a tour of the White House and the grounds. And we run the tours and invitations and that process. So the White House, as we have said, canceled the tours, confronted with the choice made by the Secret Service -- which we concur with, but it is certainly their choice because it’s their budget -- that it was the right thing to do not to add further furloughs to the future for Secret Service agents, the men and women who put their lives on the line to protect senior officials in our government, and that the result would be cutbacks in staffing, hours in an area like tours, which is so labor-intensive.
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