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According to classified documents obtained this week by The Washington Post, the week-long trip, scheduled from June 26 to July 3, will involve hundreds of U.S. Secret Service agents, a Naval aircraft carrier with a fully-staffed medical trauma center stationed offshore, 24-hour continual air coverage by fighter jets flying in shifts, and 56 support vehicles, including 14 limousines for the president and first lady, a specialized communications vehicle for secure telephone and video communications, a truck to jam radio frequencies around the president’s motorcade, an ambulance equipped to handle biological and chemical contaminants, a truck with x-ray equipment, and three trucks loaded with sheets of bulletproof glass to cover the president’s hotel windows. The vehicles will be airlifted by at least a dozen military cargo planes. Obama will be spending five nights on the continent, in Senegal, South Africa, and Tanzania.

The estimated cost to the U.S. government: $60 to $100 million.

GannonFan wrote:I don't get the point of this thread - what things should the US President not travel with when he goes abroad while doing his job? Are we actually shocked that trips overseas by a sitting US President end up costing more than it would if any of us were to take a similar trip? The only thing that's different in these threads is that donks complain about it when a conk President is in office and conks do the same when a Donk is in office.

dbackjon wrote:YAWN

GannonFan wrote:I don't get the point of this thread - what things should the US President not travel with when he goes abroad while doing his job? Are we actually shocked that trips overseas by a sitting US President end up costing more than it would if any of us were to take a similar trip? The only thing that's different in these threads is that donks complain about it when a conk President is in office and conks do the same when a Donk is in office.

ASUG8 wrote:

GannonFan wrote:I don't get the point of this thread - what things should the US President not travel with when he goes abroad while doing his job? Are we actually shocked that trips overseas by a sitting US President end up costing more than it would if any of us were to take a similar trip? The only thing that's different in these threads is that donks complain about it when a conk President is in office and conks do the same when a Donk is in office.

You can't get a White House tour because we're under a sequester, but we can park an aircraft carrier off the coast with constant fighter jet support for a week? Yeah, seems like responsible spending for me, since we have so much to gain in Senegal/Tanzania/South Africa. Hopefully Barry, Michelle, and the kids will have a good time

ASUG8 wrote:

GannonFan wrote:I don't get the point of this thread - what things should the US President not travel with when he goes abroad while doing his job? Are we actually shocked that trips overseas by a sitting US President end up costing more than it would if any of us were to take a similar trip? The only thing that's different in these threads is that donks complain about it when a conk President is in office and conks do the same when a Donk is in office.

You can't get a White House tour because we're under a sequester, but we can park an aircraft carrier off the coast with constant fighter jet support for a week? Yeah, seems like responsible spending for me, since we have so much to gain in Senegal/Tanzania/South Africa. Hopefully Barry, Michelle, and the kids will have a good time

GannonFan wrote:

ASUG8 wrote:
You can't get a White House tour because we're under a sequester, but we can park an aircraft carrier off the coast with constant fighter jet support for a week? Yeah, seems like responsible spending for me, since we have so much to gain in Senegal/Tanzania/South Africa. Hopefully Barry, Michelle, and the kids will have a good time

Well, I agree, the no White House tour thing is just a spiteful reaction to being shown that we don't really need to spend as much money as we do - kinda like a sore loser when we were kids who would take the ball away when he didn't get his way. But as for protecting the President in Africa when he's doing his job, hey, it's never going to be cheap to do so. Probably why we don't see him take trips to Africa every year.

ASUG8 wrote:

GannonFan wrote:
Well, I agree, the no White House tour thing is just a spiteful reaction to being shown that we don't really need to spend as much money as we do - kinda like a sore loser when we were kids who would take the ball away when he didn't get his way. But as for protecting the President in Africa when he's doing his job, hey, it's never going to be cheap to do so. Probably why we don't see him take trips to Africa every year.

I'm not implying that when a president travels in difficult economic times he should trade in the Caddy's for Kia's. I'm reading about the White House saying there's so much "bang for the buck" on this trip, yet there really isn't a lot of substance in this aside from it being a goodwill trip. Bush and Clinton took trips like these as well, but not when we had severe economic issues, a sequester, NSA intrusions, IRS scandals, looming healthcare reform, etc. that really should ground a president to fully address domestic concerns.

BDKJMU wrote:

ASUG8 wrote:
You can't get a White House tour because we're under a sequester, but we can park an aircraft carrier off the coast with constant fighter jet support for a week? Yeah, seems like responsible spending for me, since we have so much to gain in Senegal/Tanzania/South Africa. Hopefully Barry, Michelle, and the kids will have a good time

You beat me to it. Michelle's 5 million taxpayer funded vacation would pay for about 70 weeks of White House Tours:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/20 ... 2-million/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

UNI88 wrote:

ASUG8 wrote:
I'm not implying that when a president travels in difficult economic times he should trade in the Caddy's for Kia's. I'm reading about the White House saying there's so much "bang for the buck" on this trip, yet there really isn't a lot of substance in this aside from it being a goodwill trip. Bush and Clinton took trips like these as well, but not when we had severe economic issues, a sequester, NSA intrusions, IRS scandals, looming healthcare reform, etc. that really should ground a president to fully address domestic concerns.

I'd like to see a comparison of costs and support activities for trips of the last 3-4 Presidents. Is parking a aircraft carrier off the coast standard?

Based on the current economic situation, Obama should cut back on his travel in order to save money and maybe the wife and kids don't need to come with him to reduce expenses.

During Bush’s second term alone, Laura Bush made five “goodwill” trips to Africa. President Bush made the trip twice during his presidency. Here is former First Lady Bush at an event the night before their trip in 2008, “Tomorrow, President Bush and I leave for what will be my fifth trip to Africa since 2001, and his second trip to Africa since 2001. I’ve seen the determination of the people across Africa — and the compassion of the people of the United States of America.” Wow, that’s a lot of trips to Africa. In 2007, Laura Bush also took her daughters with her, and they went on a safari. You know, the same kind of outing that President Obama just canceled.

Not much was going right for George W. Bush. Even before the economy crashed, his legacy was 9/11, the unpopular Iraq invasion, and Hurricane Katrina. Back in 2003, Bush laid the groundwork for making aid to Africa his legacy. One of the areas where Bush drew praise was that he spent billions of taxpayer dollars on aid to Africa. It’s funny how conservatives don’t utter a peep about George W. Bush dishing out more than ten times the amount of taxpayer money on aid than Obama will spend on his trip.

Why could the country afford to spend billions of dollars during Bush’s no growth economy, but they can’t afford to spend at least $60 million for the sitting president to travel today?

Giving aid to Africa to combat malaria and AIDS is a very noble cause. It literally saves lives, but 5 goodwill visits to Africa aren’t cheap. Laura Bush wasn’t flying all alone on a commercial flight. Her trips cost the taxpayers a pretty penny. For some odd reason, the GAO (General Accounting Office) records on the cost of the Bush family’s Africa travels seem to have vanished. The media has contacted the GAO, but no specific numbers have been provided yet. President Clinton’s Africa trip in 1998 cost taxpayers $42.8 million. George W. Bush’s two trips five and ten years later were likely more expensive.

The Washington Post story didn’t say that Obama’s trip will cost $100 million, but that the trip could cost $60-100 million, and that the cost was based on similar African trips made in recent years, “Obama’s trip could cost the federal government $60 million to $100 million based on the costs of similar African trips in recent years, according to one person familiar with the journey, who was not authorized to speak for attribution.”
Read more at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=756_1371 ... AMCR1te.99" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

BDKJMU wrote:

ASUG8 wrote:
You can't get a White House tour because we're under a sequester, but we can park an aircraft carrier off the coast with constant fighter jet support for a week? Yeah, seems like responsible spending for me, since we have so much to gain in Senegal/Tanzania/South Africa. Hopefully Barry, Michelle, and the kids will have a good time

You beat me to it. Michelle's 5 million taxpayer funded vacation would pay for about 70 weeks of White House Tours:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/20 ... 2-million/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Ibanez wrote:

BDKJMU wrote:
You beat me to it. Michelle's 5 million taxpayer funded vacation would pay for about 70 weeks of White House Tours:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/20 ... 2-million/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

If it were Romney, would you be bitching?




Exactly.

Via The Hill:
President Obama’s $100 million trip to African offers “great bang for our buck,” the White House said.
“Frankly, there will be a great bang for our buck for being in Africa, because when you travel to regions like Africa that don’t get a lot of presidential attention, you can have

“If everybody took an attitude of shared sacrifice, we could solve our deficit and debt problem next week.”
-Barack Obama August 2011

White House cancels Obama's African safari after plans are revealed to include a military SNIPER
dailymail.co.uk ^ | 13 June, 2013 | David Martosko

President and Mrs. Obama are planning a trip to sub-Saharan Africa later in the month, but the White House has scotched a plan to include a Tanzanian safari on the agenda after a reporter revealed that a team of snipers with high-powered military assault rifles would accompany him in the wild.

The Washington Post reported Thursday afternoon that the itinerary's dangers 'would have required the president’s special counterassault team to carry sniper rifles with high-caliber rounds that could neutralize cheetahs, lions or other animals if they became a threat.'

Bronco wrote:

Bronco wrote:-