Six Million Dollar Trips to Afghanistan Are Too Much
by James Glaser
May 2, 2012

The average American could buy a house for the amount of money it takes to run Air Force One every hour.

The U.S. military has provided an updated estimate on that cost, first published by a taxpayer watchdog group and confirmed by FoxNews.com, and the number is staggering—$181,757 per hour. That's the price tag for shuttling around President Obama.

President Obama is on the other side of the world today in Afghanistan. It takes about 14 to 16 hours to fly from DC to Afghanistan; after all it is about 6,930 miles. So, it will cost us about $6 million dollars to fly the President over there and back. While he is there it has been reported that President Obama will be signing an aid package that locks us in to giving Afghanistan billions of dollars for the 10 years after our troops finally leave that country.

I don't believe that President Obama has an understanding of just how far in debt the United States is, and how much of that debt has been caused by him. Most reports tell us that President Obama has added over 5 TRILLION dollars to our debt and, seeing as a trillion is a million million, the President probably thinks the cost of that flight he took yesterday was cheap.

I'm not going into a long diatribe about our debt and how Obama has added to it, as others have done that over and over again. However, we should all realize that we can't keep borrowing from China so that our current President or future Presidents can continue to spend believing our country is rich.

I would find it refreshing for some President to come before the American people and admit we can't continue to do things the way we always have, because we are broke. President Obama, if he really had to sign that aid package for Afghanistan, could have done it by mail or through the internet like so many businesses do. A savings of 6 million dollars might not seem like a lot to Barack Obama, but it would be 6 million dollars that his children and ours would not have to pay back, and that is something every politician should be constantly thinking about.

Post Script:

There is no word yet in how much money President Obama has committed us to paying Afghanistan, but the signed statement says we are helping Afghanistan until at least 2024.

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