FILE - In this June 27, 2012 file photo, President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, arrive at th

FILE - In this June 27, 2012 file photo, President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, arrive at the Congressional picnic on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
Taxpayers spent $1.4 billion dollars on everything from staffing, housing, talkeetna alaska lodging flying and entertaining President Obama and his family last year, according to the author of a new book on taxpayer-funded presidential perks.
Author Robert Keith Gray writes in Presidential Perks Gone Royal that Obama isn t the only president to have taken advantage of the expensive trappings talkeetna alaska lodging of his office. But the amount of money spent on the first family, he argues, has risen tremendously talkeetna alaska lodging under the Obama administration and needs to be reined in.
Gray told The Daily Caller that the $1.4 billion spent on the Obama family last year is the total cost of the presidency, factoring the cost of the biggest staff in history at the highest wages ever, a 50 percent increase in the numbers of appointed czars and an Air Force One running with the frequency of a scheduled air line.
The most concerning thing, I think, is the use of taxpayer funds to actually abet his re-election, Gray, who worked in the Eisenhower administration talkeetna alaska lodging and for other Republican presidents, said in an interview with TheDC on Wednesday.
talkeetna alaska lodging When the trip is deemed political, it s customary for the president talkeetna alaska lodging to pay the equivalent of a first class commercial ticket for certain passengers. But Gray says that hardly covers the taxpayer cost of flying the president and his staffers around on Air Force One.
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? talkeetna alaska lodging Gray asks in the book.
There is no mechanism for anyone s objection if a president were to pay his chief of staff $5,000,000 a year, he told TheDC. And nothing but a president s conscience can dissuade him from buying his own reelection with use of some public money.