Here is the corroboration for the $179,000 per hour to operate that fucking thing...
Presidential travel as part of his job as head of state has traditionally been paid for by taxpayers, while political trips are to be covered by a candidate's campaign committee. When the two mix, the costs are to be split. Reimbursements are generally reported to the Federal Election Commission, which mandates that any political travel must be reimbursed.
How those costs are broken down, though, appears murky.
"It's very opaque," Meredith McGehee, policy director of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, told The New York Times. "You're kind of left in the position of, 'Trust us; we're doing it right.' "
Indeed, officials at the Obama White House, the Chicago campaign headquarters and the Democratic National Committee declined to say how they decide which events are political and how much to reimburse, The Associated Press has reported.
But Obama is not the only president whose campaign machine does not disclose how travel costs are divided. That secrecy has a tradition dating at least to the late 1970s.
"Most presidents have doubled up on trips [mixing official business with politicking] and said they followed the law, which is a complex formula no one really understands," Brendan Doherty, a political science professor at the U.S. Naval Academy and author of "The Rise of the President's Permanent Campaign" told ABC News. "And even on a fully political trip, the taxpayer ends up paying part of the bill.
"I've never been able to find anything concrete, so we never know the bottom-line cost of any presidential trip," Doherty told The Washington Times.
Actually, Obama is the first president to pay for re-election travel under updated rules adopted by the FEC in 2009, AP reported.
Instead of repaying the government based on the cost of first-class commercial airfare, reimbursements must now reflect the cost of chartering a Boeing 737. A campaign doesn't have to pay the full cost for a chartered plane, though, AP noted. It pays a reduced amount based on the number of people aboard Air Force One who were traveling for political reasons. That number excludes Secret Service agents and other support staff who always travel with a president.
The cost to charter a 737, while more expensive than the first-class commercial formula, doesn't even come close to covering the operating cost of Air Force One. That 747 costs $179,750 per flight hour alone in fiscal year 2012, Maj. Michelle Lai of the 89th Airlift Wing told ABC News.
Read more at Jacksonville.com: http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2012-06-16/story/fact-check-air-force-one-incumbent-presidents-perk-paid-citizens#ixzz2A2bviLie
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