Obama is the first president to pay for re-election travel under updated rules
One of the biggest gripes of the rightwing is how disgusted they are that President Obama uses Air Force One for campaign travel yet he actually pays more for doing so than any president before him ever did.
Obama is the first president to pay for re-election travel under updated rules adopted by the Federal Election Commission in 2009 to implement a lobbying and ethics reform law passed by Congress in 2007.
David Mason, a former FEC chairman, said the new rules — linking reimbursement amounts to charter air rates rather than commercial airfare — require the Obama campaign to pay significantly more than it would have under the old rules.
When President George W. Bush was running for re-election in 2004, his campaign and the Republican Party reimbursed the White House more than $1.3 million for "airlift operations," an Associated Press review of federal data shows. Those include itemized expenses for "in-flight services," like food and catering, and the president's helicopter, Marine One.
With the 2012 general election more than six months away, Obama already has exceeded that amount. Since late 2010, a separate Democratic Party "travel offset" account has paid roughly $1.5 million for similar expenses, according to FEC reports. And there can be considerable lag time between when political travel occurs and when reimbursements show up in campaign filings, so more payments are sure to be in the pipeline.
Read more: http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/INSIDE-WASHINGTON-Who-pays-when-prez-politicks-3511240.php#ixzz1u1bIRCdU
