BH e-mailed this question: “Remember when the three big auto companies got beat up for taking a plane [corporate jets] to Washington.  My question is whether or not Obama is obligated to reimburse for all his flights to campaign instead of using our money?   This must be costing us support him or not millions”.

BH, Yup, actually it costs us billions.   Essentially the way it works is so long as their is an offical public duty, or presidential event, at the destination then the entire cost is carried by the taxpayer.   If the event is exclusively for campaigning, then the Obama Campaign must reimburse expenses.

Of course you know what happens is the Administration schedules a policy speech, or an official presidential outreach appearance, in the same geographic vicinity to the campaign stop/fundraiser.   That way they don’t have to pay for it.

Deliver an early afternoon policy speech at a college, then hop around to a couple of dinner fundraisers in the same city/area, and presto;  Taxpayer funded campaigning.

To be fair, all Presidents have done it in the past.   However, none have done it to the extremes of President Obama.    But I thought you might be interested in how much President Obama and the First Family actually costs taxpayers contrasted against how much the British Royal Family costs.

(via Daily Caller) Taxpayers spent $1.4 billion dollars on everything from staffing, housing, flying and entertaining President Obama and his family last year, according to the author of a new book on taxpayer-funded presidential perks.

In comparison, British taxpayers spent just $57.8 million on the royal family.

Author Robert Keith Gray writes in “Presidential Perks Gone Royal” that Obama isn’t the only president to have taken advantage of the expensive trappings of his office. But the amount of money spent on the first family, he argues, has risen tremendously under the Obama administration and needs to be reined in.

Gray told The Daily Caller that the $1.4 billion spent on the Obama family last year is the “total cost of the presidency,” factoring the cost of the “biggest staff in history at the highest wages ever,” a 50 percent increase in the numbers of appointed czars and an Air Force One “running with the frequency of a scheduled air line.”

“The most concerning thing, I think, is the use of taxpayer funds to actually abet his re-election,” Gray, who worked in the Eisenhower administration and for other Republican presidents, said in an interview with TheDC on Wednesday.  (read more)