Taxpayers will be stuck with an enormous bill after President Obama's southern California fundraising tour, KUSI's Steve Bosh reports.
With his party's Senate majority under siege, President Obama will attend a $10,000 per plate fundraiser at the home of Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs.
Bosh noted because of technicalities in the president's schedule, taxpayers will actually pick up the tab for the entire trip despite the fundraising stop:
STEVE BOSH: Then there's the cost to taxpayers when the president travels to official or political events, like the visit to San Diego during his re-election campaign. The taxpayer cost for Air Force One alone is $228,228 per flight hour. And this White House has taken a lot of vacations, which adds to the bill.
BOB SCHULMAN: It's the extravagance of some of the trips, and particularly when he takes the wife and she takes an extra couple of weeks, and costs the taxpayers $10, $20, $40 million for she and her friends. I think most taxpayers find offense with that.
BOSH: Last year's Christmas vacation in Hawaii, the vacation to Martha's Vineyard and a short trip to California had a tab of $7.3 million. And when the president's travels mix business with politics, the politics part is not supposed to fall on the taxpayers, but they end up with the big bill because the White House determines what part is official, what part is political. Two events during the trip to San Diego: a Holocaust memorial event in L.A. and an energy-related event in San Jose - both ensuring that taxpayers will get the big bill, even though the trip is mostly political.