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The 1.4 Billion Dollar Man: Costs of the Obama White House
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DescriptionWhen President Barack Obama took First Lady Michelle Obama for a “date night” to New York City for dinner and a show, the tab cost American taxpayers $1 million. Expensive date? Not really. After all, the Obama family spends about $9 million in taxpayer funds every year on their annual vacation to Hawaii, and it costs $711,000 for each night spent at Camp David. But these charges are just a drop in the bucket. In total, Barack Obama has spent about $1.4 billion in household expenses each year since he became president, and this figure does NOT include the cost of running the White House’s policy operations – doing the job he was elected to perform. The Obama White House is the most fiscally irresponsible in the history of the US presidency. In this scorching indictment of the spending habits of Barack Obama and his administration, author John F. Groom documents the president’s extravagant disregard for the value of taxpayers' money. It's an arena of unfathomable excess and waste. While Obama positions himself as a champion of the middle class and foe of Wall Street, the fact is that he lives a taxpayer-funded lifestyle that few if any moguls could afford. He is at the very top 1% of the 1%. Obama promised “a new era of openness in government” when he came into office, but his own expenses are shrouded from public discovery, spread among numerous non-White House budget accounts, particularly under the Department of Defense. In The 1.4 Billion Dollar Man: Costs of the Obama White House, Groom shines a floodlight on the first family's staggering household budget. Extensively documented, Groom's disturbing exposé presents original research and analysis of data from federal budget documents, reports to Congress, independent investigations, scores of news service reports and information obtained directly from sources within the White House. This is the only current study of its type and the first broad compilation of presidential household expense data in the Obama era. Among the many cost centers Groom discloses, expenses incurred each year by US taxpayers include: – First family's vacations: $20 million. – Health care: $7 million. – Unreimbursed campaign expenses: $311 million. – Salary costs for military employees and presidential airlift squadron: $228 million. – And as part of the ongoing boondoggle of presidential travel – the helicopter fleet: $300 million. (Over $3.3 billion was spent designing a new presidential helicopter fleet, which Obama canceled; the helicopters already built were sold to Canada for $154 million.) America's founding may have signaled a break from the traditions of royalty, but President Obama's household expenses far exceed those of the last remaining monarchies: The British royal family received less than $50 million in taxpayer funds in 2011, an amount that would keep the Obama White House running for about nine days. Of course, the exaltation of his office is not solely the result of Obama's grandiose self-image. The president's transformation from first citizen to celebrity-in-chief is one for which the American public shares responsibility. We must reform the US presidency. The president can have the resources necessary to do his or her job – and in fact do a better job – without squandering taxpayers' money on a royal lifestyle. In The 1.4 Billion Dollar Man, you'll learn how we can fix this dismal state of affairs, return integrity to the office of the president and send the message throughout our government that wasteful, ostentatious spending will not be tolerated. Our government is insolvent. Something has to change. That change needs to start at the top.
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