Judicial Watch did a little digging on the travel costs of Obama’s vacation on the West Coast back in October and found in the process that Obama has now racked up $72 MILLION in travel expenses in his 7 years as president, making him the “$10-million-dollar (per year) man.”
Via a Freedom of Information Act request, Judicial Watch learned from the U.S. Department of the Air Force that Obama’s 2015 Columbus Day trip to San Diego cost nearly $1 million ($969,783.90) in flight expenses alone. And that’s just for the flights from Los Angeles to San Diego and then from San Diego to Washington. When you add the cost from Washington to the West Coast (which included three fundraising stops in Oregon, Seattle, and San Francisco), the total tops $2 million.
“The $2,001,468.90 Obama spent for his flights between DC and Los Angeles to vacation in San Diego brings his known total expense to the American taxpayers thus far for all Obama travel to $72,881,504.68,” Judicial Watch notes. “That comes to more than $10 million per year for each year he has been in office.”
Though some of the expenses are supposed to be reimbursed by political parties and campaigns, “only a small portion” of the president’s travel costs are actually repaid, and, unsurprisingly, the White House “keeps the formula for such cost-sharing secret.”
So how in the world can the travel expenses by so high? The cost per hour in flight when Obama travels in Air Force One is a stunning $206,337. The Department of the Air Force explained that the cost includes “fuel, flight, consumables, aircraft overhaul, and engine overhaul.”
Perhaps most depressing about the president’s exorbitant travel expenses is that those figures do not even present the full cost of his spending on vacations, which inevitably include huge security, room and board, and entertainment (think golf) expenses.
As for his West Coast fundraising jaunts, Obama used the trip as a way to promote his gun control agenda, party with Kanye West, and hit up Hollywood elites for big-dollar donations. Oh yeah, and he briefly squeezed in a visit with the families of victims of the San Bernardino terror attack that took the lives of 14.
“Barack Obama is now the 10-million-dollar man when it comes to wasteful presidential travel,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “It looks like that visit with grieving families was an excuse to get out to sunny California for some fundraising with celebrities such as Kanye West – and golfing.”
Read Judicial Watch’s full report here.
