An article I came across today in the WSJ has me really steamed.  Apparently, President Obama has nothing better to do than to fly out west to hold fundraisers and show support for Democrat Senators Michael Bennet and Harry Reid.

Now, this gets me steamed for two reasons – first of all, these trips take the President away from what he should be concertinaing on – fixing our economy, improving our international relations, working with the Intelligence and Defense communities to make our nation safer and more secure, and maybe taking another crack at a Universal Health Care proposal that could attract more of a bi-partisan interest.  After all, he technically works for us, the American people, and I can say that as his boss, I certainly do not approve of these extra-curricular activities.

Secondly, and this is probably something that irritates me more is the massive cost of flying the President out to the West Coast on his nice big jet, not the mention the cost of all of the extra security and other personnel that goes into a Presidential visit.  In this time of massively growing deficits, why the heck does the President need to spend taxpayer money to prop up the flagging campaigns of Senators who are behind in the polls largely because their constituents are obviously not too pleased with them?  What should happen is that either the campaigns of these embattled Senators or the Democratic National Committee should be charged the full cost of the President’s visit.  If you want to have the President come out and support you, fine – but you, rather than the taxpayers should have to foot the bill for the visit.  Really – is that such an unreasonable thing to ask?

Now in fairness, while this diatribe is largely directed at President Obama, he is far from the only person to whom these concerns apply.  Republican and Democrat presidents have long done exactly what President Obama is doing this week.  That said, it does not make it right and we should change the rules to prevent it from happening in the future.  Politicians whether they are local, state, or federal, should not be permitted to use public funds for personal purposes.  I’m not sure how we change the rules given the fact that the body who could most easily enact the change, Congress, is one of the largest beneficiaries of this largesse, but as citizens we need to start looking at more of these types of things and asking questions.

Let me know what you think.

Jim