Taxpayers spent $1.4 billion on Obama family last year, perks questioned in new book

[ChoomCzar]

Taxpayers spent $1.4 billion on Obama family last year, perks questioned in new book

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 to 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.” President Obama also has one unofficial "czar" which he refers to as his "ChoomCzar." This unknown and mysterious individual has unprecedented access to the White House and meets with the president routinely on a weekly basis. President Obama's spokesperson said the ChoomCzar supplies the president with "advice" but others dispute that saying the ChoomCzar supplies the president with something else. Whatever the ChoomCzar supplies the president, it is uncertain whether the ChoomCzar is paid with taxpayer funds or from the president's personal funds.

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 WhiteHouse 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.”

[timpage]

Nobody cares, chief.

[cptjohnstone]

Originally Posted by timpage

Nobody cares, chief.

I care, a lot wasted money, for which we do not have

[Guest123018-4]

A lot of people care timmy boy.
We had to borrow every penny to allow them dto live like kings and queens.

This reminds me of the criminals that know they are gong to file for bankruptcy and live like there is no tomorrow knowing full well they will not have to pay it back.
My Democrat buddies have a term for this; it is called Democrat rich.

[Munchmasterman]

Originally Posted by The2Dogs

A lot of people care timmy boy.
We had to borrow every penny to allow them dto live like kings and queens.

This reminds me of the criminals that know they are gong to file for bankruptcy and live like there is no tomorrow knowing full well they will not have to pay it back.
My Democrat buddies have a term for this; it is called Democrat rich.

It's obvious you don't have any buddies on either side. One side can't stand you because all you do is talk shit about them. The other side can't stand you because all you do is talk shit about nothing and you bore the bejesus out of them.

Maybe one day you'll be 5' 5".

[novacain]

It's very telling that this was written by a Republican and yet they didn't go back and dig into Bush's spending, well lets dig a little and see what the numbers say. Let's look at vacations shall we since they provided hard figures for those:

Obama so far in this term:
$557,700 spent for 22 trips to Camp David
$15,930,000 for 54 days spent at Camp David
$16,487,700 grand total spent, that we paid for

Bush in his first term:
$2,053,350 spent for 81 trips to Camp David, yes 81 trips in his first 4 years
$75,520,000 spent for 256 days spent at Camp David, (spent a total of 487 days in 8 years there)
$77,573,350 grand total spent, that we paid for

And the claim is that Obama is a big spender?? I haven't even included the trips made by Bush to Crawford( $146,501,950 total for the 77 trips and 490 days Bush spent there over his 8 years) all done on the tax payers dime. This is really a weak place to fight from for the Republicans since this is only the "vacation" spending, no telling what the real cost of his "other" spending was. I sure didn't see this Republican writing about those numbers at the end of either term when it was Bush spending it!