Taxpayers spent $1.4 billion on Obama family last year

[UncleBeer 244]

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.

But,..but...but... he's the preznit!

Seriously though: he's said on several occasions about how "we'd" have to "sacrifice" in these tough economic times. Was that the royal "we"?

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

But the amount of money spent on the first family, he argues, has risen tremendously under the Obama administration ...

Bullshite. As usual. They did this cost exercise for the Bush White House for FY 2008 and came up with a figure of nearly $1.6 billion before classified outlays such as AF1.

[JohnR! 5,495]

Bullshite. As usual. They did this cost exercise for the Bush White House for FY 2008 and came up with a figure of nearly $1.6 billion before classified outlays such as AF1.

It is not bs... The Obamas have outspent all presidents of all countries combined in all planets of the universe, times forever to the nth degree.

Get with the program!

[LibCampFireClub 635]

Bullshite. As usual. They did this cost exercise for the Bush White House for FY 2008 and came up with a figure of nearly $1.6 billion before classified outlays such as AF1.

For once, and only this once, your bull-defecation call is substantiated. Obama is just as lazy and big-vacation-spending as most of our previous presidents.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

For once, and only this once, your bull-defecation call is substantiated. Obama is just as lazy and big-vacation-spending as most of our previous presidents.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Here's just how stupid this book of the Republican is - yes, Robert Keith Gray is a Republican lobbyist - and how all this feigned outrage of the right wing fringe is even more stupid.

Bachmann’s claim that Barack Obama has a ‘$1.4 billion-a-year presidency’ of ‘perks and excess’

Posted by Glenn Kessler at 06:02 AM ET, 03/18/2013

(Carolyn Kaster/AP)

“A new book is out talking about the perks and the excess of the $1.4-billion-a-year presidency that we’re paying for. And this is a lifestyle that is one of excess. Now we find out that there are five chefs on Air Force One. There are two projectionists who operate the White House movie theater. They regularly sleep at the White House in order to be readily available in case the first family wants a really, really late show. And I don’t mean to be petty here, but can’t they just push the play button? We are also the ones who are paying for someone to walk the president’s dog, paying for someone to walk the president’s dog? Now, why are we doing that when we can’t even get a disabled veteran into the White House for a White House tour? That isn’t caring!”

— Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, March 16, 2013

During last year’s GOP presidential race, Bachmann racked up the highest ratio of Four-Pinocchio comments, so just about everything she says needs to be checked and doublechecked before it is reported.

In this case, Bachmann appears to be citing the self-published book “Presidential Perks Gone Royal,” by Republican lobbyist Robert Keith Gray, though one wonders whether she actually read the book — which is only 131 pages — or just read a summary that appeared in the Daily Caller, since many of her points are highlighted in the Daily Caller article.

The Fact Checker read the book so that you don’t have to. It provides no specific sourcing for any of its claims, though in the back it provides a list of articles and books that presumably the author consulted. He claims that the book is not intended as an attack on President Obama, but only on the imperial trappings of the presidency, though the subtitle of the book is: “Your taxes are being used for Obama’s re-election.”

Bachmann, however, framed it as an attack on Obama, and we will examine her claims in that context. How does Obama compare with other presidents?

The Facts

Bachmann’s headline figure is that Obama’s presidency costs $1.4 billion a year. Gray never quite explains how he developed that figure, though another self-published book, “The 1.4 Billion Dollar Man: Costs of the Obama White House,” by self-help writer John F. Groom, attempts to provide a breakdown. But what is quickly apparent is that this number covers every possible expense, including many having to do with the security that is necessary to protect the president. The figures also include the cost of the White House policy-making staffs. Are those really all “perks and excess”?

Groom’s figures include a number of somewhat fishy guesstimates (“unreimbursed campaign expenses”), but as it happens, a much more credible scholar — former White House aide Bradley H. Patterson Jr. — attempted to figure out the tab for the White House for a book, “To Serve the President,” published in 2010 by the Brookings Institution.

Patterson estimated that the cost of running the White House for fiscal 2008 — when George W. Bush was president — was nearly $1.6 billion. About half — more than $800 million — related to the Secret Service budget. An additional $271 million was spent on the president’s helicopter squadron.

If Bush is a $1.6 billion man, does that make Obama a relative bargain at $1.4 billion?

Seriously, it really depends on what one wants to count, but there appears to be no appreciable difference between Obama’s expenses and Bush’s.

Patterson, in his sober account of his tally, noted: “This is the office of the chief executive of a $3 trillion government — a government currently at war, with its security forces on duty, under the chief executive’s command, in virtually every corner of the planet.”

Indeed, Gray, when discussing his figure, cites Patterson’s “excellently researched” book, so as far as we can tell he simply took Patterson’s number for Bush and applied it to Obama — making it especially strange for Bachmann to suggest that this is unique to the current president. (Gray also cites Groom, but then Groom cites Gray, making the whole thing quite circular.)

Similarly, Bachmann’s specific points — Five chefs on Air Force One! Two projectionists in the White House! A dog walker! — are not unique to Obama. Even Gray does not try to assert that in his book.

We could not track down a source for “five chefs” on Air Force One, but perhaps the word “cook” would be better. In any case, taxpayers will be pleased to hear that White House staffers need to pay out of their pocket — $20 a meal — if they eat on board.

As for “the projectionists,” this appears to be part of the president’s 24-hour-a-day staffing requirements. Gary’s book devotes considerable space to how much all presidents have used the White House movie theater, with Jimmy Carter supposedly using it 450 times. (The White House Museum says it actually was 480 times.)

The dog walker is the silliest claim. This refers to Dale Haney, the White House groundskeeper. Gray includes in his source list an Associated Press article on Haney, which states:

In other words, the White House groundskeeper — whose main job is caring for more than 18 acres of lawns, trees and gardens — happens to like dogs and has been doing this for every president since 1972.“Haney is often spotted walking Bo, the Obama family’s Portuguese water dog. In fact, he’s tended to every White House pup since King Timahoe, Richard Nixon’s Irish setter. . . . Before Bo came along to romp on the South Lawn and roam the White House hallways, Haney spent a lot of time walking and playing with President George W. Bush’s Scottish terriers, Barney and Miss Beazley. Haney was most fond of Spot, an English springer spaniel whose mother, Millie, belonged to Bush’s father, President George H.W. Bush.”

As evidence of sloppy research, Gray at one point in his book refers to the White House paying $102,000 to a man who walks Obama’s dog, saying that one point the “handler” was flown to Maine with the dog. (This anecdote also ended up in the Daily Caller article.)

This appears to refer to Reggie Love, then the president’s personal assistant, who was once spotted taking the dog off an airplane. But the local Maine newspaper initially misreported that Love and the dog were flown on their own airplane. The article was corrected, but not before the blogosphere looked up Love’s salary and went wild with the tale of the $102,000-a-year dog handler.

We sought comment from a Bachmann spokesman but did not get a response.

The Pinocchio Test

The modern-day White House is certainly an expensive enterprise, and perhaps Bachmann would be on more solid ground if she had framed her concern about presidential perks in a less partisan manner — or if a Republican were president.

But there is big difference between “perks and excess” and security necessary to protect the president. So using the broad $1.4 billion figure is fairly misleading in that context.

Moreover, the money spent on the presidency and the so-called perks she describes appear to be no different for Obama than for Bush or other presidents. It’s absurd to suggest otherwise.

[LibCampFireClub 635]

And for the sitting president, here is just one of many mister wooden boy awards:

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

[LibCampFireClub 635]

It's like a bad dream from which the libs can't awake

This is an MFn big deal!

[ready4ONE 5,400]

Curiously the same gun - aficionado yard birds that just love to make thinly veiled hints about a forthcoming apocalyptic revolution, shout bravo at armed men threatening BLM employees in defense of a squatter scoff law claiming falsified grazing rights, but they just can't grasp why it's so expensive to protect the President, will not be phased by the revelation the claims in the OP regarding the current Presidential expenses are not, as falsely claimed unusually high, but in fact actually cheaper than the last.

It's a cotton picking shame!

[GandD 5,966]

Derp thread!

[Operator 1,927]

Derp thread!

It's a regular hit parade today.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

But,..but...but... he's the preznit!

Seriously though: he's said on several occasions about how "we'd" have to "sacrifice" in these tough economic times. Was that the royal "we"?

Is that you Gary?

[UncleBeer 244]

Here's just how stupid this book of the Republican is - yes, Robert Keith Gray is a Republican lobbyist - and how all this feigned outrage of the right wing fringe is even more stupid.

Djeezus. Do you ever reread what you write? The hate, the insults, the vitriol? God forbid you should ever forward an actual counterargument.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Who cares. When you're the president, you can snort coke out a strippers #######.

Isn't that why people become president?