There is a picture making the rounds of right wing minded sites. It is a picture comparing the expenses of the President of the United States and the Royal Family. It reports that the United States taxpayers, and we have to be specific and mention Obama because that's who the attack is focused on, spent 1.4 billion dollars on Obama as President. The total for the Royal family was around $24 million.

OK, forget the Royal Family for right now. Obviously what is supposed to be implied by the picture is that American taxpayers spend WAY too much money on many of the frivolous expenses of this administration. It took just a few minutes to find many articles using the 1.4 billion dollar figure to show how Obama was the most wasteful President in modern history. There were mentions of the huge staff, of the private theater, the use of Air Force One, trips to Camp David and other 'wasteful' expenses that added up to the bloated figure. Of course, what you got after those incendiary articles were the lemmings who felt this only proved how he was a terrible liberal, or some other nasty minded person.

The takeaway anyone would get from the articles I read would be the following; why would Obama demonize the wealth of Mitt Romney when as President he was having the American people foot the bill for 1.4 billion dollars.

The focus of all these right wing articles seems to be a online book called The Cost of the Obama White House. It's one of those books that purports to expose the 'truth' about the lavish spending of the White House. Now, again, I have to make it clear in saying all the research in the book in question focuses on the Obama White House. These are the 'extravagant' expenses HIS White House has spend using taxpayer dollars. It has chapter titles like What the White House Doesn't Want you to Know and Where Has All Your Hard Earned Money Gone. Here is a quote from the book that is on the website for the book, illustrating the focus of the expose:

From the information, I think it would be safe to say that many Americans might find pause in the amount of money spent. Another quote from the page advertising the book is hilarious to me. It asks the question “When was the last time you spend $1 million dollars on date night?

The obvious approach of countering the questions posed by the book would be to mention how we are talking about the leader of the free world and not the President of the local bank. Baked into the cost of simple things like a date night would be security detail, transportation, and other protections and precautions that would be set up for someone of the stature of the President of the United States. That would be the right and smart way to do it but I'm sure there would be people who would still insist, because of preconceived notions, that this President I a wasteful spender.

Because of this I will cut to the chase and say the book in question is a lie and the person writing the book knows it's a lie. The biggest proof of the lie is implying that President Obama spending 1.4 billion dollars a year on expenses is wasting the taxpayers money.

Before I found the page for the 1.4 billion dollar man I came across a White House report from 2010 that showed the expenses for the White House as being 1.4 billion dollar. That would confirm the title of the book and the expenses given by the book. What was missing in the book was a comparison to previous Presidents. Yes, $1.4 billion is a lot of money but if other President's spent the same amount of money, then demonizing Obama for spending what other President's spent would be silly. It turns out the Brookings Institute did a study of Presidential Expenses for 2008. On a couple of sites this was another source used to confirm the findings of this book. Those sites were so excited to find another source to support the claim they probably didn't bother to take a second look at the title and the publication date. The report was published in 2008, thus the reason why it says Presidential Expenses of 2008. While Obama was elected in 2008, he didn't take office until 2009.

The budget report was about the last year of the Bush Administration. A President wasn't mentioned in the report because the report was supposed to be non-partisan. Apparently, that confused those who were salivating at painting Obama as a spending freak as opposed to having a budget close to the former President. Yes I said close because the Brookings report shows the expenses for the Bush White House in his last year was 1.5 billion dollars. Yes on top of everything President Obama saved the taxpayer $100,000. So in trying to paint Obama as a wild eyed liberal spending a ton of money at taxpayer's expense, the truth is you have a President who is spending on par with the previous President and was proven by a non-partisan study.

Whenever I see stories like this and dig into the issue I have to ask myself the same question, when the same issues were around with the previous President, where was the outcry? Where was the laser focus to prove the former President wrong? The hate shown to the President is far beyond partisanship. And let's be clear here, there are people who support Obama with blinders on. They will cut him slack when he doesn't deserve it and I get that, but the way the opposition continues to attack and what people are willing to accept as fact without an once of critical thinking is frightening to me.

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Misleading Expense Report for President Obama - September 28, 2012
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