The Trump Circus spokespeople have a new, stupid spin on all the money being wasted by the Tiny Tyrant’s need to be hangin’ with his cronies constantly, rather than staying in the white house, like he fucking promised he would, and working. The new excuse? Oh, why being in Florida allows everyday folks, y’know, regular Americans to have access to the prez. Trouble is, that access costs $200,000, taxes, and $14,000 per year in dues. That’s around four times the median income for all those regular Americans. A person could get the feeling that the spokespeople aren’t even phoning it in at this point.
The three consecutive weekends the Tiny Tyrant has already spent in Florida have cost taxpayers about $10 million, which is slightly less than what President Obama spent on travel for a whole year.
The president — whose first budget proposal would eliminate a program that helps provide poor Americans with lawyers, among other cuts — doesn’t seem worried about the burden his unnecessary trips to Mar-a-Lago may place on taxpayers. CNN reports that, with the exception of next weekend, businesses in the Palm Beach area “say they have been told to expect the President every weekend until May.”
Every weekend until May. That’s a lot of picked pockets – Everyday Folks, Regular Americans are going to be picked clean, bone dry, by the Tiny Tyrant’s need to feel validated. None of this seems to bother Trump supporters much, but for the life of me, I cannot figure out why. If it were Clinton doing this, the howls of outrage would be deafening – “how dare she go on vacation every weekend at our expense!?” and so on. Same applies if it had been President Obama doing this – repubs would never shut the fuck up about how awful, evil, and immoral such an action would be, but Tiny Tyrant? “Oh, that’s okay, we don’t mind that he’s stripping us of all our rights and protections, picking our pockets and destroying our future, it’s greeeeaaaaat!” I just don’t grok it. At all.
Along with removing a very important program which helps people with legal problems (linked above ^) they generally have no recourse to deal with, the rethugs have finally gotten an idiot in office who will go along with killing off the NEA (federal arts funding), public broadcasting, AmeriCorps, and educational television for children. None of these programs cost much at all, and cutting them cannot be justified under “budget!”, but the right wing ideologists have hated them for ages.
While Trump spent millions in taxpayer dollars on travel during his first month in office, his team put together a budget proposal that would cut cultural institutions and important services for poor people.
The proposal would eliminate “longstanding conservative targets like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Legal Services Corporation, AmeriCorps and the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities,” the New York Times reports. “Most of the programs cost under $500 million annually, a pittance for a government that is projected to spend about $4 trillion this year.”
Important Reading:
Trump’s first month of travel expenses cost taxpayers just less than what Obama spent in a year.
Trump spox says Mar-a-Lago makes him accessible to ‘regular Americans.’ Memberships cost $200,000.
Trump’s first budget would end program to help low-income Americans get lawyers.
Siobhan says
Yeah, you know, I could make a weekend at the Mar-a-Lago if I sold my spare yacht, which I obviously have hiding around in my bachelorette pad.
Nitpick but the red-on-green highlighting was pretty hard to read.
Caine says
Went with pale yellow. Better?
Athywren - not the moon you're looking for says
For the life of me, I fail to see how the right wing still manages to be seen as the fiscally sensible region of politics. I mean, sure, left wing projects do cost money, but they also provide valuable services which are easily worth the cost to the taxpayer. Spending $10 million a month on weekend mini breaks is just frivolous excess.
Caine says
Athywren:
Yes, which is an understatement. It will be over $30 million dollars by the time May rolls around. 30 fucking million. That’s for 3 months and not quite 2 weeks. Extrapolate to four years, and that’s not counting all the other excess amounts, like the millions it’s costing for secret service to be established in NYC at Trump Tower, for Melania and the kid, and so on.