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Taxpayers Hit Hard With Michelle Obama's China Trip
Tuesday, July 21, 2015 10:17 AM
By: Tom Fitton
Barack Obama’s taxpayer-funded trips are costing taxpayers a pretty penny. Other presidents have certainly pushed the line on this. However, here, one has to ask if the Obamas are really doing the people’s business on these extravagant, spare-no-expense trips across the country and to luxury destinations overseas.
Judicial Watch just obtained records from the U.S. Department of the Air Force revealing that Michelle Obama’s 2014 trip to China cost American taxpayers $362,523.53 in air travel expenses alone. The first lady, her daughters, and her mother spent March 19-26 in China, in a trip highlighted by extended visits to some of the country’s most popular tourist sites.
Judicial Watch received Air Force records on June 25, 2015, in response to a June 19, 2014, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking any and all records concerning mission taskings of first lady Michelle Obama’s March 2014 tip to China, and any and all records concerning associated costs.
According to the newly released records, the transportation costs for the seven-day trip to China were based on a flight cost of $11,092 per hour for the Obama family, and support personnel in a C-32A presidential aircraft. The $362,523.53 air travel expense tab for the Obama entourage was more than 225 times what the average American family spends on an entire week-long vacation.
The U.S. Secret Service has not yet responded to the request for attendant costs for personnel, accommodations, meals, rental cars, and related expenses.
The Daily Mail reported: “Michelle Obama and three of her family members are staying in a $8,350-per-night Beijing presidential suite.” The 3,400-square-foot suite included a private steam room and in-room dining for six.
Though the White House billed the China trip as an effort by Michelle Obama to push her education agenda, much of the Obama family’s time was spent at popular tourist sightseeing venues. According to Diplomat.com, “The first lady, daughters Malia and Sasha, and mother Marian Robinson visited Beijing’s Forbidden City and Summer Palace as well as the Great Wall, the Terra Cotta Warriors in Xi’an, and the Chengdu Panda Base.”
Like all political trips, reality intruded. According to The Washington Post, even Michelle Obama’s efforts to promote her education agenda were not without problems.
“The trip was by no means perfect. Obama encouraged students from disadvantaged backgrounds to study abroad, but on her first full day in Beijing she visited a Chinese high school where American students said their parents pay $50,000 a year for their tuition and boarding,” the Post reported.
The first lady also called for transparency, which is too rich for words — given the illegal secrecy alone over her family’s travel on taxpayers’ dime!
Once again, the Obamas abused the public trust and raided the taxpayers’ coffers for unnecessarily luxurious travel. The fact that it took Judicial Watch a full year to obtain this information about the first lady’s China junket reveals that the “most transparent administration in history” knows that its taxpayer-financed jaunts are so excessively extravagant that it ignores open records law to keep Americans in the dark.
Judicial Watch previously uncovered an expensive combination of trips by the Obamas to Africa and Honolulu, which cost taxpayers $15,885,585.30 in flight expenses alone.
The single largest prior-known expense for accommodations was for Michelle Obama’s side-trip to Dublin, Ireland, during the 2013 G-8 conference in Belfast, when she and her entourage booked 30 rooms at the five-star Shelbourne Hotel, with the first lady staying in the 1,500-square-foot Princess Grace suite at a cost of $3,500 a night. The total cost to taxpayers for the Obamas’ Ireland trip was $7,921,638.66.
To date, the known beyond-first-class travel expenses of the Obamas and Vice President Joe Biden exceed $57 million.
Tom Fitton is the president of Judicial Watch. He is a nationally recognized expert on government corruption. A former talk radio and television host and analyst, Tom is well known across the country as a national spokesperson for the conservative cause. He has been quoted in Time, Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and most every other major newspaper in the country. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
