We paid
$1.4 billion?
Author Robert Keith Gray writes in “Presidential Perks Gone Royal” that U.S. taxpayers spent $1.4 billion dollars on staffing, housing, flying and entertaining President Obama and his family last year. (British taxpayers spent $57.8 million on the entire royal family during the same period.) The amount of money spent on America’s first family has risen outrageously under the Obama administration and needs to be reined in! The author states that the $1.4 billion spent on the Obama family last year was the “total cost of the presidency,” factoring in the costs of “the biggest staff in history, at the highest wages ever, a 50 percent increase in the number of appointed czars, and an Air Force One flying with the frequency of a scheduled airline. This does not represent the salaries of his administration ...it represents only the money spent entirely on the president and his family to keep them in the lifestyle of the rich and famous, to which they have become accustomed.
$1.4 billion is equal to seven times Mitt Romney’s entire net worth. If Romney had to pay for Barack and Michelle’s lifestyle last year, he would have been bankrupted by the third week in February.
Christine Olson
Deerwood
Comments (20)
Add commentFact checking
"Gray doesn’t say where he came up with this number, but one presumes it comes from the Federal Budget. It’s a lot of money, of course, and it’s caused no small degree of outrage on conservative blogs. There’s just one problem, Gray’s assertion that costs associated with the Presidency have “tremendously” increased since Obama took office simply isn't true."
Further: http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/the-presidency-costs-taxpayers-a-lot-bu...
The Bushes spent $1.6 billion their last year in office according to this story.
This is an old story from September which was aimed to swing some support for Romney. So did it work? Did the author become rich?
Didn't someone else put this in the paper? Art Becker?
There are very few, if any
political stories that aren't intended to "swing some support" so don't state it like its a brilliant observation on your part. Anything political that is printed typically has some slant somewhere in the article, for one party or the other, but tell us again why it's okay when it's the Dem party that does it?
What does it cost to keep
What does it cost to keep mama Robinson comfy in her rent free white house apt.? And does it cost anything to own and operate michele 's personal 757? What does it cost to brew barry's beer? if you question any of this, you are a racist. Barry has chosen to be an Afro- American, you know.
who cares...
fact of the matter, all government is out of control with spending, including this president.
Bicker back and forth about this president and the one before, but all that does is take you mind off the larger problem...both sides of the political scale have been overspending so long that we are now in Greece style deep dodo
IDWD
You said it perfectly. Thank you.
Eyolf-sore loser mentality
Hey eyolf, who won Crow Wing County. The only sore losers in CWC are the dems. You insulted your own party. Now have some crow for lunch.
General question...
Why are there subject lines of comments in the "Recent Comments", but if you click on them they take you to an article without any comments under it? And some of the articles in the "Most Commented" menu have no comments under them either. What's up with that?
The moderator deleted the comments
and or closed the comments totally. Sometimes for people flagging them and quite a few people believe just to censor comments they don't agree with.
Taylor S.
Not on the point of this article, but I heard Taylor on radio
this AM and I think he should be a lobbyist. I only heard part of the show, but I thought that would be a good match.
Can most of us agree that there is too much money spent
on the travel and partying of any President?
Of course, the cost went up, everything has gone up,
just the price of gas for the planes, higher salaries for staff,
higher cost for benefits. This is nothing to get defensive about. One just wonders if they realize that they could
try to cut costs somehow.
Sadie...read
The costs went down.
Before Obama...$1.6 billion a year.
Under Obama...$1.4 billion a year.
Read more at http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2012/06/01/Whos-the-Biggest-Spende...
Actually, Taylor probably
Actually, Taylor probably would do well as a lobbyist. He has the ability to talk to people and he comes across as well read and intelligent most of the time. He just lacks some real world living experience.
And yes, I think that ANY person or business, including the POTUS can and should find ways to economize whenever possible. Sometimes we buy things because it's "expected" or because "we've always done it that way." Well, that may be true and it may be nice when there is money to spare, but when things get tight, we need to admit that there are certain things we can't afford anymore. And that's an unpleasant thing to face across the board for anyone.
But, I haven't dug in to see exactly where that money went, or how it compares to previous monies spent by others, so I'm not going to cry foul just yet.
Thanks F&B. I wondered if it
Thanks F&B. I wondered if it was because the topic got too hot or the subject matter too uncomfortable.
I thought
I thought they were shut down because of the sensitivity of the subject. The LF shooting shouldn't have been open for comments.
Nan,
I agree 100%, you don't need rumors muddying the waters.
Radio today
I find it interesting that Koep had the loser of the election on the radio talking about his views and ideas instead of the winner and new senator?
bring in the unuion
Trumpka should unionize the presidents and make sure they are paid minimum wage.
Nan's right, FNB is not
That's my take at least. The dispatch usually does not open stories with highly sensitive/evolving topics to comments. They seem to mess up on that from time to time, and I think I have seen them own up to that in print a time or two. I have also been told directly that they messed up on this before--in the days before Hansen was running things.
Why they were open for comments in the first place is a good question. I wonder if they don't have enough people with the ability to open/close articles to comments working to keep up with things at times. This was over a holiday too, remember. I was wondering when they would finally be shut down--suspect it was when whoever does that got back from holiday. Or maybe even got called in to to work to do it?