Are The Obamas' Living Large In The White House?

Michelle Bachmann Avoids CNN Reporter
Tuesday, March 19, 2013


I wanted to check this out for myself. I began my search at the Whitehouse.gov site itself. Here's what I found. Here are Barack Obama's funding requests to Congress for the White House budget.* The estimated fiscal year (FY) 2013 funding requirement for The White House is $56,974,000

* The estimated fiscal (FY) 2012 funding requirement for The White House is $58,374,000

* For fiscal year (FY) 2011, the estimated funding requirement for The White House is $59,859,000... This represents a net increase of $716,000, or 1.21 percent, from the FY 2010 level... The FY 2011 estimate reflects a net increase of $716,000 representing inflation adjustments
However as everything else with the federal government the answer is not that simple. One needs to dig a bit deeper. The entire Executive Office of the President consists of 27+ other entities within it .

Author Robert Keith Gray writes in his recent book “Presidential Perks Gone Royal” when you take everything into account, it's more like $1.4 billion. Putting things into prospective the author also claims that under George Bush's 2008 administration the figure was $1,592,875,254. Since the budget for Air Force #1 is classified we can't be certain how much more was spend beyond those dollar amounts. These figures closely agree with Bradley Patterson's report from the Brookings Institute entitled "To Serve The President".

When you take everything into account over the years I pretty much agree with Doug Mataconis article at "Outside The Beltway" which concluded... "We spend a lot of money on the Presidency, we have been doing that for quite a long time, and there’s no evidence at all that this is a phenomenon unique to the Obama Administration."As far as some of the other criticisms like 'food tasters', it now appears these have been around since Ronnie Reagan was President (that we know of). Same goes with the chefs aboard AF1 and the dog walkers.

About all those AF1 trips: According to this opinion piece at the Express-Times.."According to the Air Force, in his first two years in office, Obama took 126 missions with 324 sorties. This means he left Washington 126 times and made 324 stops along the way. Bush took 148 missions and 416 sorties in the same time period... He has taken less vacation time than three predecessors: George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan"

These two articles back up that claim. See:

President Bush Racked Up The Most Vacations-- "Reagan spent all or part of 335 days in Santa Barbara over his 8 year presidency. Bush spent 487 days at Camp David during his presidency and 490 days at his Crawford, Texas ranch, a total of 977 days."
And
Obama travels a lot, but Bush averaged more time on Air Force One-- "Bush took 1,675 flights on Air Force One in eight years."

I'm NOT posting as an apologist for Barack Obama...
Rather to educate and put things in prospective...
And cut through all this partisan bullshit that's constantly going around.