Ah, the trevails of living off the taxpayer dime.
In an interview published by Parade magazine, First Lady Michelle Obama lamented some of the horribly difficult challenges of living in the White House. When she leaves the White House in 2017, she says she looks forward to the simpler things.
“It’s the little things, going into a grocery store and picking my own apple, checking it out and reaching into my in [my handbag] and pulling out my wallet, I don’t even know where my wallet is right now, I don’t think I’ve seen it all day,” she said. “I’m just trying to keep my regular life mojo up.”
Michelle Obama may not know where her wallet is, but she certainly knows how to find and use the taxpayers’ credit card.
Judicial Watch has kept tabs on the Obamas’ open-ended expense account, and their travels have included:
- The Secret Service entourage accompanying President Obama and his family during their trip to sub-Saharan Africa from June 27 to July 3, 2013, incurred $2,189,727.60 in lodging, entertainment, and security expenses.
- President Obama’s February 2014 Palm Springs, California, and March 2014 Key Largo, Florida, golf outings cost the taxpayers $2,952,278 for flight expenses alone.
- President Obama’s June 2013 trip to Belfast, Ireland, including a Dublin sightseeing side trip by Michelle Obama, her daughters, and her entourage, cost the taxpayers $7,921,638.66.
- $11,648.17 in security costs related to President Obama’s “date night” with First Lady Michelle Obama on May 30, 2009 in New York City.
- The Obama family 2013-2014 vacation to Honolulu cost $210,877 per hour for travel alone; at 36.9 total hours, the cost to taxpayers for the vacation’s flight expense was $7,781,361.30.
In March, Investors Business Daily reported “as of last July (2014) the Obamas had spent more than $44.4 million in taxpayer money on travel for 31 international trips lasting 119 days. For comparison, at the same point in his presidency Ronald Reagan had made 14 trips lasting 73 days.”
The news site noted “Michelle Obama’s controversial trip with friends to Spain’s luxury Costa del Sol in 2010 at a time when the U.S. unemployment rate was 9.5% on the way to 9.8%.”
According to Newsmax, Michelle Obama traveled to Italy under the guise of promoting healthy eating. “The flights to London, England; and Milan, Venice, and Vicenza, Italy, for the June 15 – 21, 2015, trip totaled 20:35 hours at the cost of $11,684 per hour, bringing the flight expense total to $240,495.67, according to the Air Force documents,” the news site reports.
No wonder Michelle Obama doesn’t know where her wallet is. Why does she need it when she has all of us to foot the bill?
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