Template:Did you know nominations/1996 United States federal budget

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by PumpkinSky talk 11:05, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

1996 United States federal budget

(

)

... that President Bill Clinton personally paid the lighting bill for the White House Christmas tree (pictured) during the government shutdown resulting from disagreements on the 1996 federal budget?

Reviewed: United States v. LaMacchia

Created/expanded by Antony-22 (talk). Self nom at 03:30, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

The 5x expansion is verified and the article has a good complement of footnotes. The hook is interesting -- and a good candidate for Christmas. However, the two sources for the hook fact indicate only that Clinton said he would pay the bill for lighting the tree, if it became necessary. They do not indicate that he actually ended up paying the bill. Are there any sources that indicate whether this actually happened? Without such sources, the hook would need to say "said he would personally pay" or something similar.

I didn't run any plagiarism checks yet. --Orlady (talk) 22:10, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

I've answered my own question. In the end, it seems that Clinton didn't have to pay. According to this National Park Service page: "The federal government shutdown and the ensuing lapse of appropriations for all non-essential federally sponsored events, caused the cancellation of Pageant of Peace activities beginning on December 16. However, the National Park Service provided funds to light the tree and keep it lit as scheduled, through midnight on January 1, 1996. [NPS-WHL, Box TBP-58, "A 82(27) Pageant of Peace 1995," memo, December 15, 1995.]" That NPS webpage has some other cute details about the impact of the budget crisis on Christmas. --Orlady (talk) 22:18, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

I suggest an Alt hook:

ALT1 ... that President Bill Clinton offered to personally pay the bill to keep the White House Christmas tree (pictured) lighted during the government shutdown resulting from disagreements on the 1996 federal budget? --Orlady (talk) 22:24, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

From the second cited article: "The White House... announc[ed] that President Clinton had decided to keep the White House Christmas tree's 6,000 bulbs lit by paying out of his own pocket for the electricity," which sounds like it says he actually did pay it. I wasn't aware of the source you brought up, though, and so I'm not sure which should be considered authoritative. (I've also made a slight tweak to your alt hook.) Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 06:16, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

This is good, as long as the hook doesn't go so far as to say that he did pay the bill. (Since previous review, I ran duplication detector against several sources and found no evidence of plagiarism.) However, the "offered to" wording that Antony inserted in my ALT hook is not supported by the article. It says that he "said he would pay the lighting bill out of his own pocket." Accordingly, I prefer the following wording:

ALT2 ... that President Bill Clinton said he would personally pay the bill to keep the White House Christmas tree (pictured) lighted during the government shutdown resulting from disagreements on the 1996 federal budget?

I'm moving this to the Christmas Eve section -- it also could go on Christmas day. --Orlady (talk) 06:36, 23 December 2011 (UTC)