While Americans are having to decide whether they can have turkey for Thanksgiving or not, President Joe Biden has blown through millions of taxpayers’ dollars on personal trips.
Biden’s trips, particularly to his beach home in Delaware, have cost about $3 million just in Secret Service personnel. According to the New York Post, 16 trips to Delaware this year racked up $1.96 million. The other $1.04 million is an estimate from another nine trips that have yet to be accounted for.
Biden has only been in office for 43 weeks, and yet 25 trips have already been accounted for.
“The costs of presidential travel and security is of obvious public interest,” Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said, according to Fox News.
But is it in the public’s interest to pay for Biden’s trips to his house in Rehoboth Beach?
Fox noted the price of these trips might also be higher since the Pentagon has not announced how much each flight on Air Force One and Marine One costs.
It is becoming increasingly frustrating to some that these costs have not been released.
“[I]t is frustrating that after years of litigation through two presidential administrations, the Secret Service and Air Force are still stonewalling the costs of presidential travel,” Fitton said, the Post reported.
There is no reasonable excuse as to why these costs should not be released. While a $3 million estimate is shocking enough, the public has the right to know exactly how much of their money is going to a president’s personal trips.
“Most Americans know that Biden is being hidden because he isn’t fit for office … What they may not realize is that they’re paying insane amounts of money for him to be tucked into bed in Delaware every weekend,” one former Trump White House official told the Post.
Sure, the American people aren’t expecting the president to never leave the White House. But neither should the public be content with paying millions for fun little getaways every other weekend.
Former President Donald Trump was certainly no great example of this. He traveled down to the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida frequently. Some of those trips cost about $3.4 million, individually, according to the Government Accountability Office.
Of course, the president of the United States has a right to protection from the Secret Service when traveling, but it would be good for Biden, and anyone in the presidential position, to look at the costs of travel before just frivolously escaping D.C. for the weekend.
Though Delaware is not far from Washington, D.C., and a weekend may not seem long, remember how many moving parts, people and planes it takes to cart a president around.
Costs build up just because the people traveling with the president have to be paid, housed, fed and have cars and caravans to drive around for protection.
In addition, Air Force One is extremely expensive to fly and maintain.
Add to that, that when Biden wants to go to the beach at his Rehoboth home, the Coast Guard has to be on patrol.
The costs add up very quickly and enormously.