The Taming of the Dana Milbank
Oct. 29th, 2002 05:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sisyphusshruggedMy mind hath been as big as one of yours,
My heart as great, my reason haply more,
To bandy word for word and frown for frown;
But now I see our lances are but straws,
Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare,
That seeming to be most which we indeed least are.
Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot,
And place your hands below Karl Rove's foot;
In token of which duty, if he please,
My hand is ready, may it do him ease.
Presidents of the United States do not buy discount airfares.
This fact, though hardly surprising, is an endless source of outrage in the nation's capital. During the Clinton administration, the Republicans expressed fury that taxpayers spent $42.8 million, not including security, for President Bill Clinton and his entourage to go to Africa.
Now it's the Democrats' turn to voice shock and dismay. Harry M. Reid (Nev.), the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, has asked the General Accounting Office to investigate how much taxpayers are spending on President Bush's trips around the country for GOP fundraisers.
Figuring out how much presidential trips cost is a murky business. Even when the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, tackles the subject, it must ignore security costs, which are classified. For the public and the press, which have no standing to demand the information from the administration, it's even more difficult.
Still, while waiting for a comprehensive GAO study, it's possible to make a ballpark estimate of the cost of presidential travel. An analysis based on interviews with current and former government officials and calculations of the number and distance of Bush's trips, indicates it has cost roughly $15.7 million for Bush to attend the 59 out-of-town political events he had done this year as of last week.
To be clear, the $15.7 million is a back-of-the-envelope calculation based not on actual travel records, but on the guesswork of those who are or have been involved in presidential travel. Nor was any attempt made to track who pays -- or should pay -- which costs (most trips were a mixture of political and official functions, with the bulk of the cost covered by the government just as it was in 1994 when Clinton pursued a slightly more aggressive political travel schedule).
-----
So, let's see. The lede on this story is how much we spent on a diplomatic trip overseas that Clinton made while he was in office while we were not in a state of war and during which he did not campaign.
Compared to this and below the lede, we have the terrible difficulties in ascertaining how much this stuff costs (although Dana doesn't quite explain how it is that he has the figures on the Clinton trip - sounds to me, given the provenance, like a republican guesstimate, and therefor, go know, a tad high, perhaps).
Well, looka here. from the US Senate Republican Policy Committee.
Just those three trips cost the American taxpayer at least $72 million -- with the Africa trip alone accounting for $42.8 million. Not only did they seriously affect the taxpayer's wallet, these three trips seriously affected America's defense. Fully 84 percent of the $72-million price tag came from the DOD budget. For example, the cost per hour to fly Air Force One, the president's personal plane, is $34,400. Of course, the $72-million price tag paid for a lot more than just flying President Clinton. It also paid for 297 military missions largely for the ferrying back and forth of some 2,400 people and necessary equipment working -- sometimes months in advance -- to assure smooth travel for the President. The trip to Africa alone involved 10 advance trips by military planes and the travel of 904 DOD personnel -- the equivalent of a U.S. Army battalion. [Note that GAO generally defines a "mission" as including either a round-trip flight between the home base and the foreign destination, or travel that includes multiple flight segments, such as from points A to B to C and back to A.]
Dana "assumes" that every one of Bush's trips involved Air Force One and one cargo plane.
Aren't you relieved to learn further down still that Bush spent far, far less money? Of course, he was on a non-stop partisan fund-raising campaign trip in time of war, which isn't quite the same thing, and we have only Dana's word for the figures, which the Bush administration, he points out, did not cavil at, as one would assume they would have had the estimate been somewhat higher.
Clinton, parenthetically, was nowhere near as aggressive about his campaign travelling as Bush has been. Nowhere near. I assume that Milbank is factoring in the amount of presidential business Clinton got done in the three months a year Bush spends on vacation.
I hope this will put an end to the little spurt of commentary on our friend Dana's bravery and competence. One moderately objective article and everyone forgets what an unprofessional jerk this man is.
Dana Milbank. Asshole.
My heart as great, my reason haply more,
To bandy word for word and frown for frown;
But now I see our lances are but straws,
Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare,
That seeming to be most which we indeed least are.
Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot,
And place your hands below Karl Rove's foot;
In token of which duty, if he please,
My hand is ready, may it do him ease.
Presidents of the United States do not buy discount airfares.
This fact, though hardly surprising, is an endless source of outrage in the nation's capital. During the Clinton administration, the Republicans expressed fury that taxpayers spent $42.8 million, not including security, for President Bill Clinton and his entourage to go to Africa.
Now it's the Democrats' turn to voice shock and dismay. Harry M. Reid (Nev.), the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, has asked the General Accounting Office to investigate how much taxpayers are spending on President Bush's trips around the country for GOP fundraisers.
Figuring out how much presidential trips cost is a murky business. Even when the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, tackles the subject, it must ignore security costs, which are classified. For the public and the press, which have no standing to demand the information from the administration, it's even more difficult.
Still, while waiting for a comprehensive GAO study, it's possible to make a ballpark estimate of the cost of presidential travel. An analysis based on interviews with current and former government officials and calculations of the number and distance of Bush's trips, indicates it has cost roughly $15.7 million for Bush to attend the 59 out-of-town political events he had done this year as of last week.
To be clear, the $15.7 million is a back-of-the-envelope calculation based not on actual travel records, but on the guesswork of those who are or have been involved in presidential travel. Nor was any attempt made to track who pays -- or should pay -- which costs (most trips were a mixture of political and official functions, with the bulk of the cost covered by the government just as it was in 1994 when Clinton pursued a slightly more aggressive political travel schedule).
-----
So, let's see. The lede on this story is how much we spent on a diplomatic trip overseas that Clinton made while he was in office while we were not in a state of war and during which he did not campaign.
Compared to this and below the lede, we have the terrible difficulties in ascertaining how much this stuff costs (although Dana doesn't quite explain how it is that he has the figures on the Clinton trip - sounds to me, given the provenance, like a republican guesstimate, and therefor, go know, a tad high, perhaps).
Well, looka here. from the US Senate Republican Policy Committee.
Just those three trips cost the American taxpayer at least $72 million -- with the Africa trip alone accounting for $42.8 million. Not only did they seriously affect the taxpayer's wallet, these three trips seriously affected America's defense. Fully 84 percent of the $72-million price tag came from the DOD budget. For example, the cost per hour to fly Air Force One, the president's personal plane, is $34,400. Of course, the $72-million price tag paid for a lot more than just flying President Clinton. It also paid for 297 military missions largely for the ferrying back and forth of some 2,400 people and necessary equipment working -- sometimes months in advance -- to assure smooth travel for the President. The trip to Africa alone involved 10 advance trips by military planes and the travel of 904 DOD personnel -- the equivalent of a U.S. Army battalion. [Note that GAO generally defines a "mission" as including either a round-trip flight between the home base and the foreign destination, or travel that includes multiple flight segments, such as from points A to B to C and back to A.]
Dana "assumes" that every one of Bush's trips involved Air Force One and one cargo plane.
Aren't you relieved to learn further down still that Bush spent far, far less money? Of course, he was on a non-stop partisan fund-raising campaign trip in time of war, which isn't quite the same thing, and we have only Dana's word for the figures, which the Bush administration, he points out, did not cavil at, as one would assume they would have had the estimate been somewhat higher.
Clinton, parenthetically, was nowhere near as aggressive about his campaign travelling as Bush has been. Nowhere near. I assume that Milbank is factoring in the amount of presidential business Clinton got done in the three months a year Bush spends on vacation.
I hope this will put an end to the little spurt of commentary on our friend Dana's bravery and competence. One moderately objective article and everyone forgets what an unprofessional jerk this man is.
Dana Milbank. Asshole.
