Washington ? Soldiers will dance free of charge at President Bush’s second inauguration, a record $40 million-plus celebration for “a nation at war” financed by some of the same big donors who bankrolled Bush’s re-election campaign.

The president’s private inaugural committee, calling on corporate and individual donors to contribute as much as $250,000 apiece, has struck a military-minded theme for a three-day series of events leading to Bush’s second-term swearing-in on Jan. 20.

“Celebrating Freedom, Honoring Service” is the slogan for a festival that will start with a ceremony at an indoor Washington arena “saluting those who serve,” and close with a collection of nine formal balls. The dances will include a Commander-in-Chief Ball open, admission free, to invited members of the military.

“We recognize this time that we are a nation at war,” explained Jeanne Phillips, a Texas businesswoman serving as chairman of the 55th Presidential Inaugural Committee. She is staging a celebration of “our freedom as Americans here at home” and “freedom everywhere.”

The Pentagon is inviting active-duty troops and families to the ball, particularly those who have recently returned from Iraq or Afghanistan or soon will be deployed there.

The theme will enable the president to draw on his strongest image, of a determined commander in an unsettling era of war against terror.

Most of the money for ceremonies such as the elaborate balls and the parade through Washington after Bush’s swearing-in at the west front of the Capitol will come from a private committee with a stated budget of $30 million to $40 million. However, it’s likely that Bush, who raised a record $270 million for his re-election, will surpass the $40 million he spent on his first inauguration in 2001.

By comparison, President Bill Clinton raised and spent $33 million for his inauguration in January 1993 and $23.7 million for his second term swearing-in in 1997.

A crew of campaign-honed fund-raisers, including Bush “Rangers” who were responsible for raising $200,000 apiece for his re-election, is raising the money for the inauguration.

President Bush, with wife Laura, left, reviews the troops from the steps of the Capitol with Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne, right, after their 2001 inauguration in Washington. The 2005 inauguration bill is expected to pass 0 million, which would be a record for the presidential pomp and circumstance.

These include Bill DeWitt, co-chairman of a Cincinnati-based investment firm who helped Bush arrange the financing for the purchase of baseball’s Texas Rangers, which Bush headed as managing partner before his election as governor of Texas in 1994.

The fund-raisers are asking corporate donors to purchase a $250,000 “underwriter package” that includes tickets to all inaugural events, 20 tickets for one of three candlelight dinners that the president will attend on the eve of the inauguration and two tickets for a more intimate lunch with Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

They are courting individual donors with a $100,000 “sponsor package” that includes fewer tickets to one of the candlelight dinners.

Twenty-one companies and individuals already have donated the maximum $250,000. They include companies with an interest in the outcome of the Bush administration’s agenda on such matters as oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Among the top donors: Exxon Mobil Corp., Occidental Petroleum Corp., Chevron Texaco and Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens, according to the committee’s accounting of about $8 million raised through Dec. 23.

The $250,000 donors also include former Enron president Richard Kinder of Houston; Dell Computer founder Michael Dell of Austin, Texas; United Technologies Corp.; the Little Rock, Ark.-based investments firm, Stephens Group Inc., and Sallie Mae Inc., the Reston, Va.-based organization that makes student loans.

Another 24 companies and individuals have given $100,000 apiece. These include Northrop Grumman Corp., a leading defense contractor; International Paper Co.; financial services company GMAC; and Al Hoffman, Florida-based finance chairman for the Republican National Committee.