I Want an Audit
Donald Trump as President of the United States is paid $400,000 a year. He also receives a $50,000 expense account, a $100,000 travel account, and a $19,000 entertainment budget. And of course, he gets to live in provided government housing, with a full staff, and round-the-clock protection. He gets the use of Air Force One, Marine One, and a fleet of armored vehicles.
I know, this President “donates” his $400,000 to charitable causes. But it’s my money, in part, and if he doesn’t want it, he can give it back to the government to defer other costs. I pay taxes, and so do you, and we ought to have some say in how it’s spent, or donated.
And I know that the job, “President,” is not an hourly, punch-the-clock, job. It’s salaried. But even a salaried job needs to have some bounds for how much time is put in on the work of governing the United States, and how much time is spent doing “other” things. So let’s look at the amount of other things the President is doing, beside the hard work of being the leader of the United States (can’t say the leader of the free world anymore, we’ve clearly abdicated that position.)
In the last three days, the President of the United States has started a minor international crisis with South Africa. The basis for this crisis, is that the President was watching Tucker Carlson, a commentator on Fox News. Carlson parroted a report about the majority black government of South Africa taking over large farms owned by whites, and killing the farmers. Carlson’s sources, South African right-wing commentators, proved to be inaccurate, but the President continued to pursue action by calling for an investigation by the US State Department.
The President of the United States has multiple intelligence gathering agencies, among them the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the State Department’s on the ground embassies and headquarters analysts. He can ask any of those agencies for information about anything, from what’s in Area 51, to the location of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. But instead, he watches Fox News. I don’t want to pay for that.
It’s 8:52 am on Saturday morning right now. The President has tweeted three times already this morning (it’s a nice day in DC, I wonder if he’s tweeting from a golf cart.) Yesterday he tweeted twenty-one times. This President has lifted twitter to the same high standard as the Gettysburg Address and the Fireside Chat, but he needs to focus on something more than just tweeting at his base. Twenty-one times: I know teenagers who tweet less than that! I don’t want to pay for that either.
Speaking of golf, this President has played golf 139 times since he entered the White House. He’s been in office for 580 days, that means he averages a game of golf every four days; spring, summer, fall and winter. When he can’t play in Washington, he flies to Florida and Mara Lago. When he doesn’t want to stay in DC to play at his National Golf Course in Virginia, he flies to his club in New Jersey. And when he goes to Europe, he spends some time at his golf course in Scotland.
Once every four days: we aren’t talking about a thirty-minute workout here, we are talking about eighteen holes of golf. That takes hours.
There’s a website dedicated to the President’s golf addiction; they estimate that the price tag for his golf (including travel and security) is over $75 million. While the website is embroiled in an argument about the costs of auxiliary aircraft that travel with Air Force One, the point is obvious – it’s a whole lot of money. That’s not coming out of his salary or his personal account, it’s coming out of my taxes (and, since I’m not paying $75 million in taxes this year, probably your taxes as well.) I surely don’t want to pay for that.
So I want an audit. We have outstanding auditors in the government, but I want an audit from outside the executive branch. I vote for the Congressional Budget Office, they do a great job in determining costs, estimated expenditures, and telling the hard truth, without a lot of political influence. I want them to audit the amount of time the President actually does the job of President, and how much we are paying for recreation, tweets, and watching Fox News.
I’m perfectly happy to pay for that.
