Posted on 10/05/2011 2:02:39 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
A fight has broken out between the White House, its defenders and a conservative public watchdog group over first lady Michelle Obama's travel costs and how they are calculated. The dispute stems from a Judicial Watch release yesterday, reported by Whispers, that said the first lady's June goodwill mission to Africa cost $424,142 just for her Air Force C32A.
Judicial Watch said it used Pentagon calculations to come up with the price to taxpayers, multiplying the hourly cost of $12,188 by the number of flight hours, 34.8.
[Read: Michelle Obama's Africa Trip Cost More than $424,142.]
The White House later said that the costs used were exaggerated and included elements typically not included in calculating flight costs.
"The number stated is misconstrued and out of context. The hourly rate is not the marginal cost of operating the planeit is an accounting figure that prices in a number of fixed costs from maintaining the Air Force fleet for this kind of plane over a year. For example, it includes estimated replacement parts, depreciation, repairs, and costs that would have been incurred regardless of this flight," said an official.
(Excerpt) Read more at usnews.com ...
So the daughters were paid a stipend?!
“when you want to calculate the cost of a mission in President Bush’s illegal war in Iraq”. Really? How was it illegal?
She plans to. This has been her Winnie Mandela wanna-bedream. 'Necklaces' for all of her enemies.
You stupid libs can't have it both ways. You force government to report costs this way and then complain when it's used?
This is the real reason we had "$400 hammers" those whiny libs lied about. They were only $400 because the "law" Congress passed forcing this kind of cost reporting. That $400 for a hammer included the average cost of running an entire ship or plane, etc.
Live by the lies, die by the lies.
And she dodged bullets in Kosovo or somewhere over there.
Please cite exactly what was illegal about Iraq. Not your opinion but the actual law that was broken.
Time to change my tagline....
This excuse by the White House makes no sense. That is the way you are supposed to calculate hourly cost. If you strip out those costs you are left with only fuel cost.
They were listed as "Senior Staff".
I'm sorry, I thought it was obvious that I was speaking about a lame ass point a liberal would try to make to slam Bush, while citing the highest possible cost for a military flight.
I guess it wasn't as obvious as I thought.
IIRC, the prez who spent the most on foreign travel before Zero was G W B.
Lots of trips touting AIDS $ to Africa and such.
“For example, when you want to calculate the cost of a mission in President Bush’s illegal war in Iraq, you can get one number, but when you want to calculate the cost of a comparable mission to fly Queen Esther and her brood on a fat-finding mission to Africa, you can produce a far lower number.”
ROARING!!!
I do apologize. I did miss it at first read.
And the Marxists convinced their useful idiots in the unions and academe that the Obamas are out for the little guy. The Obamas are parasites out for themselves only and sucking dry the marrow of the U.S. treasury.
House Travel Stipends Probed (2010)
Congressional investigators are questioning a half-dozen lawmakers for possibly misspending government funds meant to pay for overseas travel, according to people familiar with the matter.
The investigation follows a Wall Street Journal article in March that said lawmakers had used daily cash stipends, meant to cover certain costs of official government travel overseas, to cover expenses that appeared to be unauthorized by House rules. An independent ethics board has referred the matter to the House ethics committee.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704323704575461913267776270.html
crooked bastards do whatever they want with impunity living large while they run the taxpayers into the ground
Fing Frs.
anyone heard what happened with this alleged “investigation” from 2010 ?
Lawmakers Keep the Change from travel per-diems (2010)
Lawmakers who said they sometimes keep excess funds said the amounts were small. “I won’t deny that sometimes I have a little left, but it’s not muchmaybe 80, 90, or 100 dollars,” said Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D., N.C.).
Congress has no system for tracking how the cash payments, called per diems, are being spent. Lawmakers aren’t required to keep receipts and there are no public records.
In the past two years, hundreds of lawmakers spent a total of 5,300 days visiting 130 foreign countries
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703429304575095592193574752.html
If that was the policy [returning unspent per diem advances], you could never get many members traveling, said Rep. Solomon Ortiz, a Texas Democrat.
This can’t be true. We all know she shops at Target.
No one begrudges the first family an occasional vacation on the taxpayers, but THIS bunch has raised the bar from grabbing all the goodies they can before they’re found out.
Paid on Friday. Broke on Saturday. Sticking it to the taxpayers by Sunday.
The Clintons only grabbed the silverware. I wonder what will remain when the Obamas finally get evicted?
No problemo.
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