I’ve been seeing numbers thrown around like crazy.
Any reliable numbers on this?
Here’s Golf magazines take. The say $80k
People play this game pretty much anytime a President they don’t like does anything though. Its the “cost” the town paid in salaries for cops and other personal to provide security. Unless the Prez is going to spend all his time fortified in the WH, its a cost that he’s going to incur going anywhere or doing anything. (plus, for a town like St. Luce, I imagine having the Prez play golf at your courses ends up bringing in net revenue due to increased tourism).
So its probably more accurate to say it was the cost of not having the President shot then the cost of the Golf game (the article doesn’t say, but I doubt the actual golf game cost the taxpayer anything).
That article makes it sound like the Federal Government did not pay for those officers.
So, nothing?
Famous players will also play a round with a nobody for cash or as a charity fundraiser.
Tiger Woods is hardly a nobody.
I live in the affected area. The local media reported that approximately $80k was incurred in overtime and other schedule-related additional expenses by the St. Lucie County and Martin County sheriff’s offices for safeguarding the President and his staff throughout their stay. I believe Sheriff Snyder’s remarks were in reference to a suggestion that this was somehow an interference or impediment to other duties.
As far as I know, there were no greens fees or cart rentals at the course :).
Why’d you have to go and ruin a great story like Obama hiring Tiger Woods as a golf partner?
The cost-as-hater-speak angle just ruins an otherwise great urban legend. Next time replace that useless fact with speculation about how much of that went to Tiger’s pimp/manager. Don’t you know the first thing about journalism?
just to fly AF-1 and a one C-17 it would have been $130,000.
And maybe you think it’s people who don’t like the president that object. I see no reason why the public has to pay a President to chop wood in Texas or ride horses in California or surf in Hawaii any time they feel like it. There is a private retreat near the WH to get away from it all. I see no reason why Presidents aren’t held to some kind of vacation allocation of time and money spend.
And I challenge your premise that a town makes money on the deal. The public isn’t allowed on the golf course and nobody is going to rush over there following his visit to the tune of $80,000. The town will be stuck with the cost of overtime for security. It’s not a political convention.
The question was how much the golf game cost, not how much his entire trip to FL was. But the same thing applies, the Prez usually pays the price of a first-class ticket out of his own pocket. The cost of flying him in AF-1 is on the tax payer, but that’s not really the cost of the Obama’s trip, its the cost to keep the President close to the Command and Control infrastructure that exists in AF-1. The latter is in the public interest, so I don’t think its unreasonable for the public to pay for it (plus I doubt many Presidents could pay for it, even if they restricted their travel to business and campaign stops).
Each their own. I don’t begrudge Obama or Bush the ability to make their own vacation plans. They sacrificed large swaths of their personal lives to take the job, and they have (or had) fairly young families who sacrifice normal childhoods for the same. I imagine the ability to take vacations rather then being cloistered in DC helps make this more palatable.
Plus we’re the richest country in the history of the world. Its not like letting the President go to Florida to play golf is some crippling financial burden.
No way to really prove it either way, but golf-tourism is a big money-maker for the St Luce area. Having Tiger and the Prez play golf there is good advertising (note the article I linked to is in golf magazine, and it links to a second article in the same magazine), so it doesn’t seem implausible to me that the town will come out ahead.
Whadyamean “any time they feel like it”? Were they jetting off to vacation spots every other week?
When you use spurious claims like this, you tend to weaken your argument. By a lot. A real lot. As in, “what planet are you living on” a lot.
Eh, his meaning was perfectly clear. There’s no legal limitation to how often the President can go on vacation. That’s not a spurious claim, it’s true.
As I said, I don’t have a problem with it (its a little silly to decide that we as a country are going to trust somebody with nuclear launch codes, and then decide we need to micromanage their vacation hours), but in anycase, its certainly true the Presidents can take vacations whenever they feel like it. And there is a cost to the public, though as I said, those costs are indirect expense due to the fact that things in the public interest (not having an assasinated President, not having a President far away from CandC in case World War 3 starts) are more expensive to provide if the Prez moves around instead of having him sit in the White House all day. We aren’t actually paying for the Presidents golf games or brush clearing activites.
If the president never left DC, people would complain that he never actually bothered to see the country he was leading. It’s a no-win situation.
How is allotted vacation time a micromanagement of anything?
If you don’t care about it that’s fine but we are assuredly paying for these trips.
So after about two years it looks like Obama was on track to match the usual government allotment of 30 days/year of paid vacation. If I had my druthers, I’d like to see presidents able to donate the cost of a vacation trip to feeding hungry kids, which is epidemic in this country.
So, what… they never get vacation? You know… when a president is doing his thing, it’s not nine to five on weekdays. They have grueling 50, 60, 70, 80 hour work weeks and their family hardly sees them. If you expect them to never take vacation, you’re basically asking for our president’s health to deteriorate physically and mentally to the point where they can no longer function. As much as Reagan was chastised for so many breaks and napping… it probably contributed to his affable demeanor which many found likable and kept him healthier than he would have been if he tried to push himself too much.
Also, the whole ‘feed the poor’ meme that gets attached to any spending that one is ideologically opposed to is not based in reality. The money saved/spent is just a drop in the bucket for dealing with national or global hunger.
Thanks, Shakes, for the chart.
True dat.
He’s got a high-stress job and I don’t begrudge him his vacation time. I do remember that Dubya got dinged for taking what some thought were too many days off, though - Jay Leno joked, “So the President is going down to his Texas ranch to unwind. My question is, when does he wind?”
Presidents have an army of people doing the work for them including a kitchen staff and they have a dedicated retreat right down the road to escape the hell hole they live in.
I don’t see the logic behind an unlimited vacation allotment with a blank checkbook.
I said no such thing. Try reading what I wrote instead of putting your own interpretation on it.
No, no it’s not. With SSI, food “stamps” and charities, nobody is going hungry in this country. Do you have a cite?