If you haven’t heard yet, President Obama is planning a big trip to Africa. The estimated cost of this trip is $100 million for a weeklong adventure to 3 different countries. After this news came out, many started to question the importance of the trip and the steep price tag. Well finally today, Rep. George Holding from North Carolina stepped forward to speak out against the President’s extravagant trip.
Holding said on the House floor,
"For the cost of this trip to Africa, you could have 1,350 weeks of White House tours, which the White House has canceled indefinitely due to budget constraints.”
Holding also reiterated that the country is currently $16 trillion in debt, and yet here we are spending $100 million that we don’t have. Remember back when the sequestration first went into affect the White House chose to do away with the tours. Well, apparently like we had all said before, this didn’t have to happen. By simply looking at budgeting, and cutting extravagance, we could have avoided this.
The White House has defended the trip, which will reportedly involve sending over Secret Service agents, military jets and ships to Africa. But Holding said that while security is needed, these costs are "excessive."
"It is no secret that we need to rein in government spending, and the Obama administration has regularly and repeatedly shown a lack of judgment for when and where to make cuts," Holding said.
"The numbers don't lie: either the administration is bad at math, or they simply don't see a problem with their excessive spending," he added. "The American people have had enough of the frivolous and careless spending, and they deserve real, appropriate cuts from this excessive administration."
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Obviously someone needed to stand up for what is right. Thanks to Representative Holding for having the guts to say something. We cannot allow the administration to keep blaming our country’s economic issues on the lack of bipartisanship in Congress. Instead we need to hold them responsible for making unnecessary and over the top trips to foreign countries.
If President Obama would simply go through the budget line by line, like he said he would back during the campaign, perhaps he would have seen that this trip is something that could have been cut in order to save the White House tours in addition to other cuts made. When something so simple can’t get done, one must wonder where his time is being spent.
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