President Bush’s second-term inaugural celebration kicked off in Washington earlier this week, with a price tag on the festivities expected to run close to $40 million.

This new record in extravagance comes at a time of mounting deficits, a major military action and administration warnings about a supposed long-term fiscal crisis.

Contrast this with Franklin Roosevelt’s fourth inauguration, a decidedly solemn and subdued affair that featured an inaugural address only 16 sentences in length. That event took place in January 1945, in the darkest days of World War II.

Although Iraq is certainly no world war, the sentiment of sacrifice in honor of our troops would certainly still be appropriate.

Instead, we get a cute theme, “Celebrating Freedom and Honoring Service,” and one ball honoring soldiers squeezed between the eight others dedicated to donors and donor companies who paid between $100,000 and $250,000 for the honor of attending.

These donors — including defense contractor United Technologies Corp. and oil giant ExxonMobil Corp., among many other huge corporations — are paying for nearly everything related to the inauguration, and many have vested interests in the outcome of pending legislative battles.

Though donations to the presidential campaigns were limited to $2,000 from each individual with corporate donations proscribed, no such restrictions fall on the events of this week.

Members of the oil industry have donated more than a million dollars and stand to benefit by the billion if Bush can work his energy plan through a new, more compliant Senate.

Likewise, financial service providers with a lot to gain from Bush’s Social Security privatization plans have donated close to half a million dollars.

The one thing the big companies are not paying for is the event’s security. That, of course, is coming out of Washington’s Homeland Security fund.

Big-money inaugurations financed by opportunist companies are nothing new and certainly not restricted to Republicans, however, as evidenced by Bill Clinton’s 1997 inauguration and its similarly mind-boggling cost of $29.6 million.

But in no way does that let Bush and his excesses off the hook. Clinton’s America was gearing up for arguably the best three years in U.S. economic history and had no serious foreign policy commitments.

Bush, burdened with a war against terrorism, quagmire in Iraq and skyrocketing budget deficits has no such luxury.

We’re not asking for the brevity of Roosevelt’s 16 sentences, but a perhaps a 40-sentence speech would be more appropriate than a $40 million celebration.