Obama's Hawaii Blow-Out
President Obama seems oblivious to the burden he is placing on Americans with his continuous vacations, getaways, and political junkets at taxpayer expense.
After extracting the information from the U.S. Department of the Air Force, Judicial Watch's investigative team pulled together taxpayer-funded expenses that went into the Obama family's 2014 Christmas vacation to Honolulu, Hawaii.
The Hawaii visit from December 19, 2014, to January 4, 2015, marked the seventh Hawaii vacation for the family during the Obama presidency. Just the flight expenses alone to Hawaii cost taxpayers $3,672,798.
Summing up totals for the trip to Hawaii, to the West Coast, and to Martha's Vineyard last year, the trips cost nearly $3 million alone in transportation. Let's break down the specifics. The documents we obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request show that the Obama family spent 17.8 hours in the air round-trip at $206,337.00 per hour, bringing the total cost to taxpayers to $3,672,798.60. Other figures your JW unearthed show that over the past three years, the Obama Hawaii Christmas vacations altogether have cost taxpayers $15,540,515.10 in transportation expenses alone. This includes outbound and return flight expenses in 2012 totaling $4,086,355.20. (The Secret Service provided documents for Obama's Christmas 2012 trip to Honolulu. The grand total is $654,599.40 including $409,225.78 in hotels.) Flight expenses for the Obamas' 2013 Christmas vacation to Hawaii cost taxpayers $7,781,361.30.
It is good to be the king. Can you imagine that any but the most wealthy of Americans could afford all those luxury trips to Hawaii from DC for a family of four?
The average family of four regular Americans spent just $4,580.00 on vacations in 2013.
The president does not seem inclined to cut corners and save expenses with an eye toward the U.S. taxpayer. The Obama family rented the same plush oceanfront estate they've used for the past several years. The four-member Obama family spent its extended two-week vacation at a palatial mansion with: "13 bedrooms, a prime location on Kailua beach and all the mod cons that the First Family could ask for ... Beyond the lawn lies the famous beach, up which the waves roll majestically, 24 hours a day," according to the London Telegraph.
In separate, but related news, we have also obtained records from the U.S. Department of the Air Force revealing that the flight cost for Obama's July 2014 fundraising expedition to Seattle, Washington; San Francisco and Los Angeles, California; and the flight cost for the Obama family's August 2014 vacation to Martha's Vineyard came to a whopping total of $2,825,751.80 in taxpayer-paid transportation expenses.
Obama's three-day fundraising tour in Seattle, raising money for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), began on July 22. His visits to Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles included at least five fundraisers. Afterwards, the Obama family left in Air Force One for atwo-week vacation in Martha's Vineyard from August 9-23.
Obama received heavy criticism for moving forward with the West Coast fundraisers in July and the August vacation due to numerous major international crises at the time: escalated fighting in Gaza and the surge of illegal aliens over the U.S. border. Only a week before heading west, Obama also drew fire for attending fundraisers in New York immediately after the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in Ukraine.
Obama's fundraising trips were also deemed inappropriate by some because of the heavy burden they place on American taxpayers forced to foot the majority of the bill for explicitly Democratic fundraisers. According to campaign finance laws, the DNC only has to pay the equivalent of a commercial airline ticket to fly Obama, while taxpayers must pay for the lion's share of Air Force One's operating cost. It is a scam. Reimbursement by the parties and candidates for the tremendous costs to taxpayers is ridiculously low - just relatively modest airfare and money for hotel and food. It is a scam and the actual process for billing is secret, as the AP reports:
When a presidential trip includes multiple stops, some of them for political events and some for official purposes, then travel costs get divided up between the campaign and the government. But following a decades-old White House tradition, Obama aides declined to share details on how that's done.
The Washington Examiner has appropriately dubbed Obama the "Vacationer in Chief." With Michelle Obama preparing to take a trip to Japan and Cambodia this month, the
Examiner "calculated that the first family has racked up 38 holidays, working vacations, and fun trips like a date night in New York. They are on par to take at least 45 holidays before leaving office."
We can never know the full cost, as the Examiner acknowledges, but the FOIA documents we have obtained make it very evident that this president is not exactly parsimonious when it comes to taxpayer funded money. Our friends at the Examiner note that JW has been the key to exposing the ongoing abuse of taxpayer dollars by President Obama:
Costs are hard to pin down, and most come as a result of Freedom of Information Act suits from taxpayer watchdog Judicial Watch which pegged the Obama-Biden vacation tab at $40 million last year. That was before the first lady and daughters took spring break in China, and the first family's annual summer vacation in Martha's Vineyard, Christmas in Hawaii, and this year's holidays.
The Obamas' travel is out of control. They are treating the Air Force One like an Uber ride. Our military deserves better. And the Secret Service is stretched to the breaking point by President's Obama's abusive travel. One need only read the reports this week about Secret Service agents driving drunk through a possible bomb crime scene to know that morale in that agency must be in the pits. This out-of-control traveling presidency is putting the security of the president and others at risk!
Politicians of both parties in Washington are hesitant to rein Obama in because restraining his perks of power might result in cutting off their taxpayer-provided, unnecessary perks of office.
So it once again falls to JW to track and expose this waste, fraud, and abuse. Americans want this information, want accountability, and our team here is happy to be of public service!
THE CONSPIRACY TO DESTROY THE AMERICAN
MIDDLE-CLASS: Unions Partner with Obama and His Wall
Street Cronies
THE DEMOCRAT PARTY HAS, WHILE THE GOP
WATCHED, TURNED AMERICAN INTO MEXICO’S JOBS, WELFARE AND DRUG MARKET.
The percentage of foreign-born
workers in the U.S. labor force has more than tripled over the last four
decades and while the U.S. represents just 5 percent of the world’s population
it attracts 20 percent of the world’s immigrants, according to a new report.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/03/america-no-legal-need-apply-jobs-all-go.html
BUYING HILLARY CLINTON: She serves the 1%
like a
graduate of Obamanonics!
WILL OBAMA CAUSE THE IMPENDING GLOBAL
ECONOMIC MELTDOWN?
"Notwithstanding these powerful trends, the stock
markets continue to power on, providing a graphic demonstration of the degree
to which the accumulation of wealth by global financial elites has become
divorced from the actual process of production."
STAGGERING EXPLOSION OF POVERTY IN AMERICA …
as Obama eases millions of illegals into our jobs and hands
them billions in
welfare!
PAT BUCHANAN: Obama’s surrender of American
borders
to NARCOMEX.
OBAMANOMICS: Cut corporate tax, billions in
bailouts for Wall Street, Cut Medicare, Social Security and jobs to illegals to
keep wages depressed!
……….there is a reason why Wall Street
invested so much in Obama and are now buying Hillary Clinton.
OBAMANOMICS: CLOSET REPUBLICAN BARACK
OBAMA’S GIFT TO THE 1% and WALL STREET LOOTERS!
“As Obama and the Democrats know
perfectly well, the supposedly “progressive”
elements of his budget will be
rejected by the Republican Congress, while the pro-
corporate and militarist meat of
the proposal will be enacted.”
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