Our current president has made 76 trips to his home state of Delaware since his inauguration in January 2021. Most were only for weekend visits to one of his two very expensive homes. Others were just single-day trips his staff recorded as being for official business.
The president has spent nearly 365 days in the state of Delaware. That puts him first on the list of presidents in terms of time away from the White House. Many taxpayers would be unhappy to hear what these frequent trips cost. Whenever he visits his home in Rehoboth Beach, he takes along medical personnel, staff, media, secret service, cooks, and an assortment of military personnel that fly and maintain Air Force One. Additionally, he takes another Air Force cargo plane, C-17, to get his bullet and bomb proof limo to his hometown. This expense is not the final nail in the coffin. The local township and county provide security and open medical facilities to ensure the president can be seen quickly if he becomes ill while at home in Delaware. Many of the local agencies that provide these services have applied for grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) asking for reimbursement for their services which cost the local taxpayers.
There are several points to make here. One, why do we taxpayers let our president use tax money to go home from the White House for weekend jaunts. I don’t think the White House is a dump that our leader has to leave on multiple weekends. We hardly ever hear of our presidents using Camp David for weekend getaways. Two, Fox News recently stated that from the president’s inauguration up until November 2022, that we had spent $11 million to fly Marine One and Air Force One on these weekend trips. Based on these calculations, it could cost taxpayers almost $22 million supporting these trips over the period of Biden’s four-year term in office.
These weekend trips are completely unnecessary. It seems that every president since Harry Truman has used Air Force One and Marine One to take weekend trip back home. None of them ever consider the cost to the taxpayer.
We are $34,000,000,000,000 in debt. Why does our president, regardless of political party, continue turning a blind eye to how they use our tax dollars for their personal pleasure? Many of us think it is about time presidents pay for their personal travel to include travel to fundraising events that are not official business.
When Harry Truman departed the White House in 1952, after serving as president, Bess Truman drove their car with Harry riding all the way back to Missouri. No presidential plane, no secret service, no press, no presidential retirement. He paid his own motel bills, meals, gas, etc. We might not have to get back to that, but we surely need to do something about the expenses we, the taxpayers, incur today concerning presidential and congressional travel.
Christopher Acker
Delaware
