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Records newly obtained by officials with Judicial Watch revealed on Thursday that lodging, security and “entertainment” for the Obamas’ entourage during their trip last year to Africa cost taxpayers nearly $2.2 million. “The Obamas clearly either do not understand the value of a dollar – or understand it all too well when someone else is picking up the tab,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Keep in mind that this outrageously lavish excursion came at the very same time that the president was shutting down White House tours and blaming it on the sequester. As one congressional critic noted at...

Obama administration travel and vacation documents were released yesterday by Judicial Watch, and they reveal an unprecedented level of executive branch leisure spending. According to public information: “As of 2001, the president earns a $400,000 annual salary, along with a $50,000 annual expense account, a $100,000 nontaxable travel account, and $19,000 for entertainment. The most recent raise in salary was approved by Congress and President Bill Clinton in 1999 and went into effect in 2001.” Obtained via a Freedom of Information request, here are some of the Obama presidency’s spending items: Since 2009, a total of $40,000,000 has been spent....

A prominent Japanese politician has raised hackles as Barack Obama visits Tokyo by claiming it's an 'open secret' that he and the first lady are headed for divorce, and that the president has been using Secret Service agents to cover for him as he pursues extramarital affairs. Kazuyuki Hamada, who sits in the upper house of Japan's parliament, earned his PhD a half-mile from the White House at George Washington University, and emerged as a shrill commentator on America's economy and foreign policy. In 2009 he also joined the ranks of the so-called 'birthers,' arguing in a book titled 'Who...

New figures by the Congressional Budget Office released on Monday reveal that over the next 10 years the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio will double to 78%. Over the last four decades America's average debt-to-GDP ratio was 39%. At the end of 2007, federal debt was just 35% of GDP. The CBO report says gross federal debt will soar from $17.7 trillion to $27 trillion over the next ten years. CBO warned of the dire consequences the nation's debt will have if gone unchecked. "Such high and rising debt would have serious negative consequences," says the report. "Federal spending on interest payments...

The Obama administration wants to spend $400,000 on a camel sculpture for a new embassy building in Pakistan, according to a report Monday. BuzzFeed broke the news that the State Department has plans to commission the camel sculpture from John Baldessari, an American artist. The art is called, “Camel Contemplating Needle.” According to a government document posted by BuzzFeed, the sculpture is a “large 500lb fiberglass aluminum, stainless steel, acrylic and painted contemporary art piece.” “Public art which will be presented in the new embassy should reflect the values of a predominately Islamist country,” the document states. While the United...

In late March, President Obama took a week-long trip through Europe which included a stop of less than 24 hours in Brussels, Belgium for meetings with the European Union and NATO. The president stayed at The Hotel, a twenty-seven story hotel in the center of the city. The estimated cost for the president's stay, including about two weeks for an advance team, was $1,522,646.36.

When U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power testifies before a House Appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday, the panel will consider a budget request for international organizations that is 33 percent bigger than last year’s, including a 43 percent hike in U.S. contributions to peacekeeping missions. […] As it has done for the past two years, the administration is asking Congress to waive legislative provisions making it unlawful for the U.S. to fund U.N. agencies that admit “Palestine.” …

President Barack Obama, the hardest working man in show business, is planning a family weekend vacation in south Florida this Thursday. This comes on the heels of the Obama family’s his & her separate Washington’s Birthday weekend vacations (three weeks ago), which followed on the Obama family’s Hawaii Christmas vacation that First Lady Michelle Obama stayed on well in to January (nine weeks ago) after the rest of the family returned to Washington. CNN Coverage Manager Steve Brusk reported on Twitter: President and first lady go to Miami area for education event tomorrow, and had planned to stay for family...

Remember: We actually pay people to report on stuff like this. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), while not exactly non-partisan, doesn’t always see eye to eye with either party in D.C. Yes, sometimes the effects of proposed Democrat economic policies are so obvious that even the CBO is forced to agree with Republicans. The CBO just reported that the Democrats plan to raise the minimum wage would cost between 500,00 to a million jobs. Initially. No. Duh. At least that many jobs; really, probably more. “The CBO analysts said their estimate of employment losses was approximate,” says Fox News. “They...

Obama is having a grand old time with his socialist buddy President Francois Hollande of France on his visit, and for the first time ever, Americans will get a view of just how much a State dinner costs them. It took thirteen months for the State Department to respond to the request for the costs of such dinners, but here they are! CBS News has obtained the Office of Protocol’s expense calculations for the first five state dinners of the Obama presidency. Nov. 24, 2009 – State dinner for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India. $572,187.36 May 19, 2010 –...

It's been reported that Barack Obama is going focus on income inequality in his SOTU speech: President Obama will try to pump some vitality into a lackluster second term on Tuesday when he delivers his State of the Union address. The address will include a “healthy dose” of the income inequality message the White House has focused on in recent weeks, according to one senior administration official familiar with the text. Naturally, Obama's proposals will place the burden smack on the shoulders of small business: The president, who has yet to add to the big legislative accomplishments of his first...

The subject of this post could be up for debate. I have written before about President Obama's denial that we have an actual spending problem. I've lost count of the number of times he has led the charge to spend more of our hard-earned money. He has been out in front, telling the Republicans he was tired of hearing them talk about how much money the federal government was spending. He really seems to believe that isn't a problem and he isn't bashful about telling anyone who will listen. He wants to talk about anything but government spending. That narrative...

D.C. Council members are looking to keep the city government running through a federal shutdown by paying employees with funds from the city’s contingency cash reserve fund — a tactic that could avert a showdown with federal officials. A bill circulated to council members Thursday would designate all city employees as “essential personnel,” allow D.C. Council employees to work voluntarily until federal appropriations are approved and pay employees from the city’s contingency cash reserve fund. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson is expected to introduce the bill at a council session Tuesday — the same day the federal government shutdown would take...

President Barack Obama is once again warning House Republicans that he will not negotiate over a debt-ceiling increase, even as the U.S. government moves closer to its borrowing limit. Obama called Speaker John Boehner Friday night to reiterate his hard-line stance. The Ohio Republican’s office said the president called to say “he wouldn’t negotiate with him on the debt limit.” “Given the long history of using debt limit increases to achieve bipartisan deficit reduction and economic reforms, the speaker was disappointed but told the president that the two chambers of Congress will chart the path ahead,” a Boehner aide said...

Chairman Bernanke: “We could raise interest rates in 15 minutes if we have to. So there really is no problem with raising rates, tightening monetary policy, slowing the economy, reducing inflation at the appropriate time. Now that time is not now.”Scott Pelley, CBS 60 Minutes: “You have what degree of confidence in your ability to control this?” “100%.”* * *No doubt that exchange of 2010 will go down as the most famous of Mr. Bernanke’s tenure as chairman of the Federal Reserve. It is the context in which to savor — if that is the word — the news...

This is the first consecutive monthly drop in 14 months and the largest miss vs expectations on record. Printing at 76.8 (against an expectation of 82.0), this is the lowest in 5 months and points to the picture we have been painting of a consumer increasingly affected by rising rates and soaring gas prices amid stagnant incomes. As Citi notes below, this is the exact same pattern we have seen play out in the last 2 cycles and suggest significant downside risk to US equities. The economic outlook sub-index collapsed to its lowest since January. Biggest miss on the headline...

Bo, the president's Portuguese Water Dog, arrived separately on one of two MV-22 Ospreys, a hybrid aircraft which takes off like a helicopter but flies like a plane.

"We have heard of the impious doctrine in the Old World, that the people were made for kings, not kings for the people. Is the same doctrine to be revived in the New, in another shape...? --James Madison (1788) For all the (class warfare rhetoric) spewed by (Barack Hussein Obama) and his (NeoCom Cadres), he and his co-conspirator,(Machelle LaVaugh Obama) live like royalty. Their let-'em-eat-cake lifestyle is even more contemptible, however, when one considers that it comes at the expense of those whom they purport to represent. For all the references to "fat cats," it turns out the fattest cats...

President Barack Obama's trip to Africa later this month could be one of the most expensive of his tenure, costing the government as much as $100 million. According to a confidential internal planning document obtained by The Washington Post, hundreds of Secret Service agents will be dispatched to secure facilities in Senegal, South Africa, and Tanzania, which the first family will visit from June 26 to July 3. A Navy aircraft carrier or amphibious ship, with fully staffed medical trauma center, will be stationed offshore in case of an emergency. In addition, military cargo planes will airlift in 56 support...

The White House sought to pressure House Republicans into a budget conference with the Senate on Monday, warning President Obama would veto any 2014 spending bills based on the House GOP budget. In Statements of Administration Policy, the White House said Obama would veto all spending bills unless they pass Congress "in the context of an overall budget framework that supports our recovery and enables sufficient investments in education, infrastructure, innovation and national security for our economy to compete in the future." That language suggests the administration, like congressional Democrats, wants to use the conference to turn off the automatic...