The President enjoys crisscrossing the country regularly, essentially to attend fundraising parties for himself and the Democratic National Committee. Yes, we pay for those, too. However, overseas “goodwill” trips are another thing entirely.
The National Taxpayers Union said Mr. Obama is spending about 29 hours of flight time on the trip that began Thursday, taking him to Kenya and Ethiopia. Operating Air Force One costs $206,337 per flight hour, for a total of $5,983,773.
The total cost of the trip will easily reach into tens of millions of dollars. In the summer of 2013, Mr. Obama took his family on a weeklong trip to sub-Saharan Africa that was estimated to cost taxpayers between $60 million and $100 million.
Study author and policy analyst Michael Tasselmyer of the National Taxpayers Union Foundation found that Mr. Obama is now tied for most international trips by a president through July of his seventh year in office.
Read the details in the Washinton Times here.
For those keeping track of carbon footprints, sometimes it seems he is racing to set the record. Mr. Obama now has equaled former President Clinton with a running total of 41 trips, although Mr. Clinton stayed abroad longer — 178 days, compared to 161 for Mr. Obama. Just give the current president more time; he’ll catch up.
By comparison, on the Republican side, President George W. Bush took a grand total of 38 international trips though the very same point of his presidency, staying out of the country for 157 days. Ronald Reagan undertook some 21 international trips by this point of his presidency, traveling overseas for exactly 101 days.
Money that could be given to service men and women
60 million on last trip to Africa…. Probably more this time…. No conscience