Tuesday
Mar052013
Texas Rep Introduces Amendment To Suspend Obama Golf Trips
Nicholas Ballasy reports that Republican Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert has introduced an amendment to a Continuing Resolution that would not provide the White House with any taxpayer funds to transport President Barack Obama to and from any golf course as long as White House public tours were not being offered due to budget cuts.
“None of the funds made available by a division of this act may be used to transport the president to or from a golf course until public tours of the White House resume,” the amendment reads.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013 at 05:24 PM
Reader Comments (42)
returning to golf: absurd - but so much of the sequester issue is theater of the absurd.
PEOPLE.....
"Gee bye the way, we are still spending a butt load more than we did last year" Um, no. Still way too high, but decreasing from an absurd peak:
http://www.cbo.gov/publication/43907
And since we are on Sequester Day +5 things are really looking up, or down, as the case may be.
The previous president spent more time on vacation than any President in my memory. The complaints I heard voiced at the time was that the President seemed to be out to lunch permanently, not only on vacation. I do not remember elected officals demanding reimbursement for travel back and forth to Texas for the numerous Presidential vacations.
I guess the reality based community realizes the President is on the job 24/7 and accepts the costs associated with travel even if we do not like the President's policies. The reality based community does not make up travel costs 100x actual costs when the President makes a trip to India. When you BELIEVE in a means to an end, faith based reality can make any lie valid and elevate crap like these statements above its rightful place.
Didn't you just describe the motto of the new Harmon Project?
Does seem odd, at a time when you're wrongly preaching that the financial sky is falling due to your political foes, and when you have full access to a nice course at Camp David, you instead do a "fantasy camp" in S. Fla. At best, it's political tone-deafness, but he seems to equate "winning an election" with "being right."
At least George W, for all the varied faults he's rightly called to task for, went to Texas and chopped brush (and maybe an armadillo or two).
Love it when the right is called reactionary when it's the left that hangs on dearly to a dying economic model.
I go with BO's decision.
Imagine if the Dems controlled the WH and it was Shrub curtailing the tours and then playing golf. (Forget the fact that Shrub is actually a pretty good golfer).
low information morons that are blaming congress for wasting their time are completely missing the point. you're showing the low level of your thinking.
this bill has been introduced to show how ridiculous obama has been trying to pin everything that is wrong on the GOP. he's cutting tours of the white house, which are led by volunteers, and placing the blame on the sequester. the bill is about showing the hypocrisy of obama. how can he explain cutting something as petty as white house tours and then use taxpayer money on golf trips.
no republican is ever going to care how much golf obama plays if he actually does a little governing instead of running around the country campaigning against all that is wrong as if he has played no part in anything. obama was given the option by gop to sign a bill that would give him complete control on what was cut. we have a ton of waste. instead, he wanted people to suffer so that he could blame the gop for a bill he created. he overplayed the suffering in attempt to scare americans.
but somehow, the media is going to spin this as the gop is ignoring real problems instead of what it is, obama's lack of ability to solve problems rather than place blame. at what point is obama held accountable for anything?
its pretty sad to see how many of obama's sheep can't make it any deeper into a news story than a msnbc headline or soundbite and believe whatever the white house led media feeds you.
But a couple of issues: Bush II stopped playing golf early in his Presidency out of respect for the soldiers overseas risking their lives. I personally thought it was wrong at the time - to equate a leisure activity or hobby with slovenly or disrespectful behavior- so I don't begrudge BHO his rounds of golf. Nor his basketball or bicycle riding on Martha's vineyard or his wife's ski vacations. Or his Secretary of Defense taking our Gulfstream to California every weekend.
We the people hired these folks to do a job and we employers (citizens) should expect to pay them what they are worth.
http://www.businessinsider.com/15-charts-about-wealth-and-inequality-in-america-2010-4?op=1
RE: <<We the people hired these folks to do a job and we employers (citizens) should expect to pay them what they are worth>>
Agree with you on this. Unfortunately though, I think that would require the furloughing of the entire government... <g>
Seriously though, perhaps the good citizens of America should ponder the possibility of a movement to withhold the paying of their taxes this April until the government (Administrative and Legislative) goes back to doing its job. After all, we're getting pretty close to the revolutionary concept this country's independence was founded upon: taxation without representation.
Just wondering how close you live to Jekyll Island?
As a native son of Longview, Texas (shown right on that screen with Rep. Gohmert) I feel that most of the people I know back there would be extremely happy and proud to be called reactionary. To them, it's a feature, not a bug!
That quote on being able to see Jekyll Island from the end of your street is way, way, way too close to a former half-term governor of Alaska to not attribute to her!
Aaron: There is no production, for the most part. That is not how it works anymore; money is made from moving it around instead of using it for something productive. And that is the problem no one seems to want to recognize. It doesn't fit in the neoclassical scheme so it doesn't exist. Kind of like how neoclassical economics fails to recognize that there is no Planet B.
Forgive me if I have difficulty accepting an economics analysis from anyone who spells "laze-fare." What is it, a french cab? Don't give me the grammar-nazi label for a term that you should have seen written in a book at least once before you are able to espouse theories about it. What next, the "laugher curve" and your theories about taxation and revenue?
You sly fellow. That little 9 hole Travis deal is a gem. Would of loved to see pictures of what the old Ross course looked like. I believe a nice match could be in the cards. I'm about a hours drive south of Brunswick. There's a great public Ross track, Hyde Park, about 5 minutes from my place as well. (Unless you prefer my office, where you can contemplate the merits and demerits of the only course of its kind, designed jointly by World Golf Hall of Fame members Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus! Damn, I sound just like the brochure.)
The laissez-faire observation was just funny (but also quite telling).
Gomer was effective in pointing this out. Like I said before, imagine if Shrub had shut down WH tours 2 weeks before Eastern.
I just want to point out that I am neither a GOP or a DEM, and barely an INDY.
The source of the list of stats I pasted I could have found from several different medias and sources, from both sides of the bench, but sadly they all share *the same truth*.
For you to come to any sort of defense of the obscene disporportianate(sp) balance of wealth by spewing forth a bunch of crap is just insuting, to all of us, and, unless you are making in the 10's of millions, to yourself.
You wannabe rich people who cannot see that the GOP really IS a bunch of racially charged old white farts is just sad. And don't misread me; the DEmocrats are not any better in their want to make AMerica a better place for everyone --- that is ---everyone.
And to you GOP members who are good Americans, I apologize for my terrible generalization about the GOP- but the party as we know it now was simply founded by white flight, and is continued to be fueled by the same white flight that turned generations of Southern Democratic families in to Republicans when LBJ did the right thing in the 60's, and sadly then did the wrong thing by listening to the warmongers who got us embroiled in VietNam.
I know I have pissed everyone off by now, so, Hello, I must be going.
Bacjk to the point-take anyones factual look at money distribution in America, and any amount of soap box stances, on working hard, and all...when you cannot even get a good job without having to have a good credit report, a report given out by 3 crooked companies who will not correct simple errors, shit---
A lot of people who WANT to do the right thing are not even afforded the opportunity to do anything, and then they get called names....
Sorry, but this has just turned in to a rant, and I apologize t those who tried to follow along.
I'm putting myself in time out.
Brad: I plan to set up a new KLG email address to replace the one that was hacked last year. Watch for it ;-)
ABC News reports this evening that the White House is saving $18,000 per week by cancelling tours:
"Republicans accuse the White House of playing politics," reports ABC. "But the White House says it is canceling the tours because sequester spending cuts have sliced $84 million out of the Secret Service's $1.6 billion budget. And they are the ones who secure the tours. They wouldn't say how much this saves, so, we did some math. Tours are open 20 hours a week and use 30 uniformed Secret Service officers at about $30 an hour. Total saved? Approximately $18,000 a week."
Which secret service report are you citing?
http://firstread.nbcnews.com/