Presidential Perks Gone Royal Read online

  PRESIDENTIAL PERKS

  GONE ROYAL

  Your Taxes Are Being Used For Obama's Re-election

  by political insider

  Robert Keith Gray

  Copyright © Robert Keith Gray, 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission in writing from the author or publisher except in the case of brief quotations in media articles and reviews.

  Published by New Voices Press

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  ISBN: 978-0-9883591-0-9

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  1. Politics and Current events 2. Political Process

  3. United States Politics and Government 4. Electoral Process

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  Disclaimer & Legal Notices

  Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders of material reproduced in this book. If any unintended omissions have occurred, we would be pleased to hear of them so we can rectify the matter in future printings.

  The information provided in this book is strictly for educational purposes. While the information is based on the latest research and personal experience, the opinions expressed are those of the author, and he will not be held liable for any damages, real or perceived, resulting from the use of this information.

  This book begins and ends

  with this

  Dedication

  to

  The unified voices of

  concerned Americans:

  our nation's most powerful weapon for positive change

  President Obama To Diane Sawyer,

  January 25, 2010

  “I'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president... There's a tendency in Washington to think that our job description, the job description of elected officials, is to get re-elected.”

  We have noticed that tendency, Mr. President

  .

  Table of Contents

  1: Our Presidency Has Gone Royal

  2: Overkill: 469 Assistant Presidents and 43 Czars

  3: When a Man’s Home Is His Castle, Literally

  4: An Insider Tour of the Presidential Palace and Grounds

  5: Camp David: A Vacation Retreat for Family, Friends and Political Contributors

  6: The First Lady’s Queenly Prerogatives

  7: Even the First Canine Lives Like Royalty

  8: BillionAir! Flight Services Fit for a King

  9: Presidential Limo and Royal Tour Bus to Rival a Rock Star’s

  10: The Ultimate Perk: A Taxpayer-Assisted Re-election

  11: A Call to Action

  Open Letter to President Obama

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  A Troubling Time in Our History

  As proud citizens of the United States of America, we insist our presidents be as protected, as fully secure from harm, as humanly possible.

  This is imperative.

  They are the leaders of our land and we want them to have unusual creature comforts.

  They are well deserved.

  They deplane on foreign lands in a luxurious display of the world’s most comfortable, sophisticated and technically-advanced aircraft.

  That makes us proud.

  To take over many of the presidential duties, and to assist them in their campaigns for re-election, we have given our presidents freedom to enlist hundreds of “assistant presidents” with questionable qualifications, answerable only to them.

  That gives us pause!

  In their bargain use of presidential perks, we have given sitting presidents unfair financial advantages over competitors for their office, a threat to the democratic process.

  This gives us concern. And it should!

  “We need to remind President Obama that we elected a president that serves beneath the law and did not anoint a king that is above the law.”

  ―Statement from Arizona Governor Jan Brewer on August 18, 2011

  Chapter One

  Our Presidency Has Gone Royal

  As a political science major, I have lived a charmed life. I was only thirty when I served as Appointments Secretary to United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In Ike’s second term he made me a member of his cabinet. In the succeeding decades, I became friend and advisor to four other of our presidents. For Ronald Reagan, I was National Communications Director during his successful campaign for the presidency. Then he made me his first presidential appointee when he named me Co-Chairman of his inaugural. Later, I created the field of “Public Affairs” on Capitol hill and continued to enjoy an insider’s view not only of the presidential residence but, importantly, of the growing presidential perks and their negative impact on the electoral process.

  From these vantage points, as the decades have passed, I began to note a very troubling trend with a compounding growth, one that now is spiraling out of control. To verify my observations, I meticulously scrutinized everything I personally saw, heard and researched. To help put together all the pieces of a highly complex puzzle and ensure that everything you read is as accurate as we could make it (and faced with some obvious camouflaging of data), I engaged professional research assistants who triple-checked or relentlessly searched for every figure and fact used in this book. A recent, former presidential chief of staff provided further assistance.

  The sad but undeniable conclusion: the presidency has become a de facto principality—right under the noses of an unaware public.

  Today’s interested citizens rant about the Congress. They know those 535 Congresspersons and Senators have their own health insurance, retirement system and repeatedly vote themselves pay raises. But behind the screens of the fully necessary security requirements, hidden under the covers of other departmental budgets, intermixed with defense spending, the escalating costs of the presidency have eluded the focus of the press or the attention of the public.

  This book was not written as a partisan attack against President Obama. It began over our alarm at the spiraling number and power of the presidential perks and their assault on democracy’s imperative of fair elections. President Obama is the obvious focus as the reigning president, but he particularly draws our fire as the costs of his presidency continue into the stratosphere. As the nation’s economy and employment levels suffer, the numbers and costs of President Obama’s supporting staff climb higher and higher. For every other expenditure in government, there is a watchdog committee, a reporting requirement and checks and balances. But no such single source or oversight exists for the expenses of the presidency. This book asks, “Why?” it also raises the question: Given the great power we give our presidents, why do we not see that their use of public funds for their re-elections is a threat to the democracy?

  In the interests of full disclosure, I am in favor of less government and more individual freedom, just as our forefathers decreed when they drafted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Whether or not you agree with that, I ask you to keep an open mind as you read. I believe I am an intelligent, balanced observer who has grown increasingly incensed over the years—on a bipartisan basis and with good reason—by the uncontrolled and unregulated abuse of presidential privilege to the tune of billions of taxpayer dollars. Knowing the facts as I present them to you in this book, I think it will be difficult
, if not impossible, for anyone to deny that these over-the-top, wildly-expensive perks have grown to the point where they severely compromise the elective process by giving the incumbent both blatant and subliminal advantages for his re-election.

  There have been grumblings in the popular press about abuse of taxpayer funds. We are all understandably preoccupied to varying degrees with government spending, which has left us with a huge and still escalating national debt. However, with a new presidential election looming, the time has come for us to put a laser focus on the American presidency figuratively, “going royal.” Why? Because this very expensive development does not just leach billions from taxpayer coffers, but even more dangerously, today it represents an assault on the democratic process.

  Our nation’s founders initially proposed calling George Washington “King George.” Washington rejected that title as inappropriate for a nation based on the principle that all men are created equal. Other self-effacing and frugal presidents followed Washington. Herbert Hoover refused a presidential salary. Equally principled Howard Taft paid for the first White House automobile from his own funds. When Harry Truman left the White House, he drove his wife home to Missouri in the family car—without escort.

  In the following decades, our presidents have taken on—or in many cases, taken for granted—an ever-increasing and always more dazzling array of comforts, conveniences, professional cronies, travel luxuries and other lifestyle enhancements. While we have a right to be proud when our Chief executive arrives on foreign soil in grand style, we should at the same time be aware of and concerned about the skyrocketing variety and costs of the entire spectrum of presidential perks. Their total, in the eight years of the George W. Bush presidency, set historic records. That extravagant record was then considerably topped in only the first three years of the Obama administration.

  It is a frightening trend. Non-King George Washington would be shocked and dismayed to see the many ways in which democracy’s presidency has been given the job assists and lifestyle embellishments historically reserved for royals. Last year, it cost the British taxpayers $57.8 million to maintain Britain’s royal family. During that same year, it cost American taxpayers some $1.4 billion to house and serve the Obamas in the White House, along with their families, friends and visiting campaign contributors.

  In 2010, a year of record unemployment, when most Americans were grateful just to have a job, it was reported that 74% of White House employees were given an average 9% raise.

  Many of the costs of the presidency are hidden in the budgets of the interior Department and its Park Service and the Defense Department as well as in legislation passed by the Congress. Ferreting out the costs of presidential perks is so challenging a task that one suspects this difficulty is deliberate.

  In 2008, two months before his election to the presidency, then Senator Obama was interviewed for a piece in Reader’s Digest. To his interviewer he said, “I passed a bill last year that sets up a searchable website where you can find every dollar of federal spending.”

  The bill was S.2590, but candidate Obama’s statement needs some editing. First, no Senator “passes” a bill, of course. That takes a majority vote of all members of the Senate. And S.2590 was not even Mr. Obama’s bill. It was Senator Coburn’s bill, co-sponsored by Senator Obama along with 27 other members of the Senate, including Mr. Obama’s opponent for the presidency, Senator John McCain.

  But even those discrepancies would be forgiven by someone trying to arrive at an accurate summation of the presidential perks if it provided any assistance to the near-impossible job of trying to put accurate figures on the costs of perks provided by the taxpayer to our president and to the first family. Instead of giving us a search engine to explore “every dollar of federal spending,” it gives us a tool to examine the many contracts our government makes with outside vendors. It will lead you to information about our government’s contracts with Boeing, but it reveals little about the costs of the presidential perks. Thus, despite our best efforts at unearthing the correct figures, if any inaccurate statement or number remains in this book at the time of its printing, I suggest that it can be attributed to the deliberate obfuscation of data.

  If any inaccurate figure has been used or any incorrect statement about any person appears in this book, it is both unintentional and despite our very best and very determined efforts to present the facts. And I invite you to search for the facts to see if you can find any figures more accurate than those we have used, following our research and backed by the work of our professional research assistants.

  Nearing Two Billion Reasons Why We Should Care

  As taxpaying citizens, it is appropriate, even urgent, that we question some items when a single year’s value of presidential perks is climbing towards TWO BILLION DOLLARS! In a government supposedly bristling with checks and balances, ought we to be understandably concerned there is not a single government watchdog over total presidential expenditures?

  Do you believe that any president, Republican or Democrat, needs 25 limousines reserved for him and his family; or a total of 35 helicopters, with 28 more on order? And does the president of a democracy really need dozens of jet aircraft in the presidential fleet, with their expenses hidden in Defense and Air Force budgets? Has anyone ever questioned why these numbers are so enormous, and what use is actually made of all these duplicate limos, airplanes and helicopters?

  When the president makes a trip on Air Force One, he needs to ask no one for approval to make any of his very frequent trips vacationing or campaigning. When President Obama took his wife to New York for a “date night,” the cost to taxpayers was several million dollars. But no force other than his conscience could have stopped him.

  When the United States’ billion-dollar air armada is being used politically, is it fair to taxpayers that we only be reimbursed by the president’s campaign committee for the value of one first-class-commercial ticket for each passenger who is deemed aboard “for political purposes?” And is that bargain-price advantage fair to those opposing an incumbent president?

  Do we think the Secretary of Defense is going to object when several hundred members of the military for whom the Secretary is accountable are used for domestic chores to serve the president’s family, campaign contributors and guests at Camp David? These personnel are paid for by taxpayers and will continue to add to taxpayer expense in terms of their recruitment, payroll and retirement.

  Where is our level of alarm when our president names 43 “czars” without senatorial advice and consent, and without the approval or even oversight by any other person or body? The czars are department heads or advisors personally selected and appointed by the president, at his discretion. When appointed, some of their salaries exceeded those of our elected members of Congress. These appointees have executive authority, big budgets, offices, staffs, limousines and power in various functions and regions of the country.

  Why is there a need for homeland Security Czar John Brennan when we already have Cabinet officer Janet Napolitano, who is Secretary of homeland Security? She runs an entire department with a $35.5 billion budget and 165,000 employees. Why then does President Obama need a czar in this area, appointed by him, reporting only to him and not confirmed by the Senate?

  That’s just one example of a frightening development that has only grown: the number of these appointed czars, circumventing the confirmation process or examination by any other body, has grown from 8 in President Clinton’s administration to 28 during George Bush’s eight years, and to 43 in the first 20 months of the Obama presidency.

  President Obama has appointed 469 very senior staffers to positions that rightfully could be called “assistant presidents,” 226 of them paid over $100,000 a year and 77 of them paid as much as $172,000 a year. Not one of them was voted into office or subject to the approval of any other governmental body or official.

  Between his dozens of czars and hundreds of very senior staff, this president has a shadow governme
nt picked without any approval from his people or their representatives and reporting only to him. In our democracy? Sounds more like the trappings of a monarchy or dictatorship.

  Should we not be concerned that no one in government is empowered—or brave enough—to tell a president it is nothing short of extravagant foolishness to have twenty-six cabin crew members for Air Force One, and five chefs! Or, as it has been reported, to pay $102,000 a year to the man who walks the first-family’s dog! With his billion-dollar lifestyle, can we reasonably expect a president to identify with the real-world problems of his citizens, tens of millions of them currently unemployed?

  Most troubling of all, the majority of the over-the-top extravagances and presidential prerogatives now give grossly unfair advantages to any president standing for re-election. If you favor an opposing candidate and would wish him (or her) to have a fair chance, or, if you favor President Obama but cherish fair and honest elections as an imperative basic for our democracy, does this not disturb you?

  Where is our vaunted checks and balances system? I want to know, and so should you.

  I am not alone in what some believe is a quixotic attempt to shed light on this shadowy but hugely significant aspect of our government and the way it works, or, more accurately, fails to work properly on our behalf. I was cheered not long ago when Judicial Watch, a watchdog organization dedicated to investigating and fighting government corruption, filed a lawsuit against the Federal Government over its refusal to disclose how much we taxpayers were forced to spend, without our knowledge or consent, to send First Lady Michelle Obama, her mother, daughters, niece and nephew on an all-expenses-paid safari in Africa—a trip which was definitely in the multimillion-dollar range.