‘Little Joke’ for Reagan’s Critics : Ambulance Delivers Not-Quite-DOA Budget
The budget office, aware that President Reagan’s 1987 budget was being called “dead on arrival” by critics, used an ambulance handled by attendants dressed in hospital greens to deliver copies.
Reporters lined up in light drizzle outside the Government Printing Office at 7:30 a.m., waiting for the first copies, stepped back when they heard a siren.
With the ambulance’s lights flashing, two attendants raced to its rear, opened the door and removed--strapped to a gurney--an employee of the White House Office of Management and Budget.
They carried the supine Paul Olkhovsky past the crush of cameras, up the steps and to the second floor, where attendants placed a budget copy on his chest.
Olkhovsky pronounced it alive and kicking.
Asked whose idea the skit was, OMB spokesman Ed Dale said: “We just thought it up here” as a “little joke.”
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