Posted on 09/27/2012 2:51:09 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Taxpayers spent $1.4 billion dollars on everything from staffing, housing, flying and entertaining President Obama and his family last year, according to the author of a new book on taxpayer-funded presidential perks.
In comparison, British taxpayers spent just $57.8 million on the royal family.
Author Robert Keith Gray writes in “Presidential Perks Gone Royal” that Obama isn’t the only president to have taken advantage of the expensive trappings of his office. But the amount of money spent on the first family, he argues, has risen tremendously under the Obama administration and needs to be reined in.
Gray told The Daily Caller that the $1.4 billion spent on the Obama family last year is the “total cost of the presidency,” factoring the cost of the “biggest staff in history at the highest wages ever,” a 50 percent increase in the numbers of appointed czars and an Air Force One “running with the frequency of a scheduled air line.”
“The most concerning thing, I think, is the use of taxpayer funds to actually abet his re-election,” Gray, who worked in the Eisenhower administration and for other Republican presidents, said in an interview with TheDC on Wednesday.
“The press has been so slow in picking up on this extraordinary increase in the president’s expenses,” Gray told TheDC.
Specifically, Gray said taxpayer dollars are subsidizing Obama’s re-election effort when he uses Air Force One to jet across the country campaigning.
When the trip is deemed political, it’s customary for the president to pay the equivalent of a first class commercial ticket for certain passengers. But Gray says that hardly covers the taxpayer cost of flying the president and his staffers around on Air Force One.
“When the United States’ billion-dollar air armada is being used politically, is it fair to taxpayers that we only be reimbursed by the president’s campaign committee for the value of one first-class commercial ticket for each passenger who is deemed aboard ‘for political purposes?’” Gray asks in the book.
“And is that bargain-price advantage fair to those opposing an incumbent president?”
In the book, Gray admits Americans want their president to be safe and comfortable but argues the system should be reformed to stop the amount of unquestioned perks given to the president.
“There is no mechanism for anyone’s objection if a president were to pay his chief of staff $5,000,000 a year,” he told TheDC. “And nothing but a president’s conscience can dissuade him from buying his own reelection with use of some public money.”
Aside from a salary, the president gets a $50,000 a year expense account, a $100,000 travel account, $19,000 entertainment budget and an additional million for “unanticipated needs,” he notes.
Here is a sample of other pricey taxpayer funded perks exclusively reserved for the president:
The president can appoint high-paid staffers without Senate confirmation: Obama has 469 senior staffers and 226 are paid more than $100,000 a year, according to the book. Seventy-seven are paid as much as $172,000 per year. He also has appointed 43 “czars.”
The president can vacation for free at Camp David: Gray writes that each round trip made to Camp David costs the taxpayers $25,350. It’s also estimated that the combined transportation and personnel costs for a Camp David visit are $295,000 per night.
The president has a full-time movie projectionist in the White House theater: Projectionists sleep at the White House and are there 24 hours a day in case anyone needs to see a movie. “Compared to the 450 times President Carter used the movie theater in his four years in the White House, the average American citizen, according to industry statistics, goes out to see a movie slightly less than five times a year,” Gray writes.
The president’s family’s gets certain travel and security expenses paid while vacationing: “First Lady Michelle Obama drew flack from the media and irate citizens when it was disclosed that, not counting Saturdays and Sundays, she spent 42 days on vacation — within the span of one year.”
The president’s dog gets its own high-paid staffer: “Bo made the news when he and his handler were flown to join the president on vacation in Maine,” Gray wrote about the Obama family dog. “It has been reported that the first family’s dog handler was paid $102,000, last year.”
We spent a thousand times as much on deficit spending for pork to buy votes and support from rich liberals. The $1.4T in destructive waste bothers me a whole lot more than the $1.4B for a spoiled bigot and family.
Taxpayers Sweep [Jimmy] Carter’s Tennis Court, Clean His Pool
And protecting Obama from an enraged America for many years will cost us another couple billion.
They plan on buying a mega mansion in Hawaii, and who is paying for it?
President Barack Obama shares a lighter moment during a meeting in the Situation Room of the White House, Nov. 22, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
I’d love to know how much that private school is costing us for his 2 kids. Did anyone see Brian Williams’ snarky question to Mitt regarding the private school Mitt’s parents sent him to years and years ago? Brian reminded the viewers it would cost $38,000 in today’s $$ to send a kid to Mitt’s private school, and asked Mitt “doesn’t every child deserve such an education?”.
...And yet, we still haven't found any fit enough to run a lemonade stand profitably.
It’s good to be King, even if just for awhile.
Hey there,CW!
Can you imagine Ronald Reagan putting his foot up on the Oval Office desk?
I didn’t think so.
This is so indicative of Obama’s contempt of everything American, and of that we hold sacred.
And there’s that blowhard Joe Biden blabbering away as if Obama gives a crap, and doesn’t have enough sense to tell Zippy to get his damn foot off the desk.
He’s a muzzie showing the sole of his foot to the history of the desk and those that have sat behind it.
Leftist’s have a completely torqued view of what the job of “Representative of the people” means. They don’t recognize it for what it is. They see those votes that put them in the top position of leadership as the winning numbers of a lottery.
They see it as a ticket to ride.
Bill Clinton said he had more fun as President than any other President before him.
Obama is trying to outdo him.
The president’s dog has a handler? At over $100,000/year! We pay for that? So those two kids who wanted a dog can’t take care of it? Good grief!
In contrast the British PM gets paid about $300,000.
White House basketball court, President Obama takes a shot in 2009 (White House - Pete Souza)
White House family theater (Pete Souza)
Tender: President Barack Obama dances with First Lady Michelle Obama in the Blue Room of the White House prior to an ‘In Performance at the White House’ series concert honoring songwriters Burt Bacharach and Hal David on May 9, 2012
Unwinding over a game of pool after his VIP guests have gone home
Sidwell Friends Tuition for 2012-2013
Lower School - $33,268 (includes hot lunch and textbooks)
Middle and Upper Schools - $34,268 (includes hot lunch)
baraq is livin large and gettin paid.
You might want to read up on that. Start with George Washington. He and his family had people stopping by their farm (a lot). They were treated as guests and fed and housed.
"In the true tradition of hospitality, the Washington's welcomed hundreds of guests to Mount Vernon each year. Many of the guests remained over night, or for several days, and the servants were kept busy preparing rooms for visitors. Mrs. Washington kept low post beds in storage that could be brought down and set up in the rooms to accommodate the overflow of travelers." - Mount Vernon
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