Together with 54 other U.S. governors, Gov. Juan N. Babauta gets to get a prominent seat in today\u2019s inauguration ceremonies for President Bush in Washington D.C.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll governors will be assembled and transported right next to the stage where the president will be sworn-in. All the 55 governors will be prominently seated pretty close to the president. We\u2019re very happy and proud about that because we don\u2019t usually attend inaugurations because we\u2019re so far away. To be present here representing the CNMI is a great honor,\u201d said Babauta in a brief phone call from D.C. yesterday.<\/p>\n
He said the governors will be gathered first at the National Governor\u2019s Association headquarters in D.C. before they are brought to the inaugural site.<\/p>\n
After the 55th U.S. president is sworn in, he said the governors will join the presidential entourage at a review stand to view the parade.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not too far from the White House. There, we will be seated next to the president with all the Cabinet members [and] members of Congress,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Babauta said there are many inaugural balls that would take place later in the day but he may only attend one\u2014most likely the Texas barbeque-style inaugural party.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll be attending that one but probably at the end of the day, I\u2019ll be frozen here,\u201d he laughed, noting that offices had to be shut down yesterday morning due to heavy snow.<\/p>\n
He said the weather condition had affected some of his meetings with federal officials, including some members of Congress.<\/p>\n
While in D.C., Babauta is set to meet with Indiana Rep. Dan Burton to discuss regional health issues and funding for dialysis units for the Commonwealth Health Center and Alaska Rep. Don Young for funding for the $12-million Talafofo road project on Saipan.<\/p>\n
After the presidential inauguration, Babauta said that he and Guam Gov. Felix Camacho will meet with the Marianas reservists in Fort Hope, Louisiana.<\/p>\n
The troops are expected to be deployed to Iraq by February.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Together with 54 other U.S. governors, Gov. Juan N. Babauta gets to get a prominent seat in today\u2019s inauguration ceremonies for President Bush in Washington D.C.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87372\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}