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You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Open Thread: An Unprecedented Drain on the National Coffers

Open Thread: An Unprecedented Drain on the National Coffers

by Anne Laurie|  March 22, 20173:50 pm| 42 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Hail to the Hairpiece, Open Threads, Republican Stupidity, Trump Crime Cartel, Not Normal

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A @Patbagley Refesher Course on the 3 Branches of Government pic.twitter.com/tUk7tUL63W

— Miss Myrtle (@MissMyrtle2) March 22, 2017

Secret Service asked for $60 million extra for Trump-era travel and protection, documents show https://t.co/LXPtpDMSvD

— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) March 22, 2017

… Nearly half of the additional money, $26.8 million, would pay to protect President Trump’s family and private home in New York’s Trump Tower, the documents show, while $33 million would be spent on travel costs incurred by “the president, vice president and other visiting heads of state.”

The documents, part of the Secret Service’s request for the fiscal 2018 budget, reflect the costly surprise facing Secret Service agents tasked with guarding the president’s large and far-flung family, accommodating their ambitious travel schedules and fortifying the three-floor Manhattan penthouse where first lady Melania Trump and her son, Barron, live…

The budget requests reflect a potentially awkward contrast between Trump’s efforts to cut federal spending in many areas and the escalating costs of his freewheeling travel itinerary. Trump jetted to Mar-a-Lago on Friday for his fifth post-inauguration weekend trip, one day after the White House released a federal budget proposing deep cuts to many government programs.

Former agents said the requests indicate that the agency had to adapt to offer full protection for a president and first family who appear to have placed few limits on their personal travel and living arrangements….

Some of the public funding could potentially become revenue for Trump’s private company, the Trump Organization, which owns the Trump Tower that agents must now protect. The Defense Department and Secret Service have sought to rent space in Trump Tower but have not said how much space they’re interested in, or at what cost. Neither the Secret Service nor the Trump Organization have disclosed how much public money, if any, is being spent toward Trump Tower space or other costs…

The Secret Service’s protection costs are only a fraction of the total public spending devoted to safeguarding Trump properties. New York police spent roughly $24 million toward security costs at Trump Tower between the election and inauguration, according to police figures provided to The Post.

At Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach County officials say their sheriff’s office has spent more than $1.5 million toward overtime for deputies guarding the exclusive resort Trump has taken to calling “the southern White House” and “winter White House.”

County officials have proposed levying a special fee on the resort, saying they would have to otherwise raise taxes on local residents to help cover its high security costs. The Coast Guard has also paid to provide round-the-clock patrols of the resort’s two coastlines, including through the use of a gun-mounted response boat that, according to agency budget documents, costs $1,500 an hour…

SO MUCH FOR FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY, REPUBS!

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Reader Interactions

42Comments

  1. 1.

    TenguPhule

    March 22, 2017 at 3:56 pm

    First agenda for 2018 Congress. Cut Trump security funding to zero. /even I can dream

  2. 2.

    Mnemosyne

    March 22, 2017 at 4:00 pm

    But it’s okay because the Obamas cost the country eleventy billion dollars! Plus Obama golfed too much, while Trump golfs exactly the right amount.

  3. 3.

    Roger Moore

    March 22, 2017 at 4:05 pm

    Come on! We all know that “fiscal responsibility” means spending money on white people.

  4. 4.

    schrodingers_cat

    March 22, 2017 at 4:07 pm

    He is costing more than money. He is undermining the goodwill and prestige built by the United States over decades. Once you lose your reputation its difficult to get it back.

  5. 5.

    Feathers

    March 22, 2017 at 4:08 pm

    There is also the issue that this is against the law. After Nixon bought a second house in Florida, Congress passed a law saying that future Presidents could only designate one residence to be protected by the Secret Service. That seems to have gone out the window.

    I have a running bet with myself as to whether Palm Beach or NYC is the first to sue demanding that they are NOT the one true residence.

    On my phone or I’d look it up.

  6. 6.

    Ridnik Chrome

    March 22, 2017 at 4:08 pm

    Somebody owes somebody a Coke…

  7. 7.

    rikyrah

    March 22, 2017 at 4:15 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:

    He is costing more than money. He is undermining the goodwill and prestige built by the United States over decades. Once you lose your reputation its difficult to get it back.

    And, it’s going SO FAST.

  8. 8.

    Yutsano

    March 22, 2017 at 4:15 pm

    The real kicker: the vast majority of that money is going back into the Hairy Yam’s coffers.

  9. 9.

    rikyrah

    March 22, 2017 at 4:21 pm

    When Right Wing Media Goes From Being GOP Propaganda to Intel Source
    by Nancy LeTourneau March 21, 2017 2:01 PM

    An awful lot of us remember the propaganda role played by Fox News in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. I’ll let Charles Ponce de Leon summarize:

    Predisposed to see things from the Bush administration’s point of view, FNC anchors and reporters had trouble containing their enthusiasm at the prospect of expanding the war on terror to “take out” Saddam Hussein and “liberate” Iraq. FNC’s talk-show hosts were particularly bellicose, goading their guests to rant about Hussein’s malevolence and the benefits that would follow any American-instigated regime change. They denounced nations that refused to join the US-led coalition as cowardly appeasers and routinely suggested that Americans who opposed the war were traitors who had cast their lot with the enemy.

    For years now, that has been the major role of right wing media — to serve as the propaganda arm for the GOP — whether it was cheerleading for the Bush administration or providing fodder for resisting Obama.

    But now the tables have been turned. Right wing media inhabits a whole new role in the Trump administration. Eschewing the entire federal bureaucracy that he oversees, the president is now relying on conservative media outlets as his main source of intelligence. Just two months into Trump’s term, we’ve seen several examples. It was a report on Fox News that led the president to suggest that Sweden was the victim of a terrorist attack. It was an article in Breitbart that led the president to suggest that Obama had wiretapped him. It was an appearance on Fox News by Judge Napolitano that led the administration to claim that British intelligence had been used to spy on the Trump campaign.

  10. 10.

    rikyrah

    March 22, 2017 at 4:23 pm

    Why Trump Is Growing Increasingly Paranoid
    by Nancy LeTourneau March 22, 2017 8:00 AM

    Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman describe a president in a perilous emotional state. Here are a few significant excerpts:

    The testimony of Mr. Comey and that of Adm. Michael S. Rogers, his National Security Agency counterpart, will most likely enervate and distract Mr. Trump’s administration for weeks, if not longer…

    But it’s the obsessiveness and ferocity of Mr. Trump’s pushback against the Russian allegations, often untethered from fact or tact, that is making an uncertain situation worse.

    Mr. Trump’s allies have begun to wonder if his need for self-expression, often on social media, will exceed his instinct for self-preservation, with disastrous results both for the president and for a party whose fate is now tightly tied to his…

    The problem, from the perspective of Mr. Trump’s beleaguered political fire brigade, is that the president insists on dealing with crises by creating new ones…

    People close to the president say Mr. Trump’s Twitter torrent had less to do with fact, strategy or tactic than a sense of persecution bordering on faith…

    The president, people close to him have said over the last several weeks, has become increasingly frustrated at his inability to control the narrative of his action-packed presidency, after being able to dominate the political discourse or divert criticism by launching one of his signature Twitter attacks…

    …Mr. Trump’s Twitter persona seems to have shifted from puckish to paranoid.

  11. 11.

    Roger Moore

    March 22, 2017 at 4:24 pm

    @rikyrah:
    And the Trump administration is going to be about as intelligent as you’d expect for a group that gets their intelligence from FNC, Breitbart, InfoWars, et. al.

  12. 12.

    rikyrah

    March 22, 2017 at 4:25 pm

    Devin Nunes Intends to Obstruct Justice
    by Martin Longman March 22, 2017 4:00 PM

    House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes called a press conference a little while ago to announce that he intended to commit a blatant act of criminal obstruction of justice with respect to the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of Trump and Trump associates’ connections to the Russians’ interference in our presidential election. Nunes began by declaring that President-Elect Trump’s personal communications may have been intercepted during the Transition due to “incidental collection” during an unrelated, completely legal and FISA-approved investigation.

    He then said that the potential surveillance was not related to Russia, that it wasn’t clear that it was collected at Trump Tower and that he was “alarmed by it.”

    He further stated that he had advised House Speaker Paul Ryan of his findings and that he was traveling to the White House this afternoon to share with them information that had been provided to him by the FBI in a classified setting for the purposes of advancing a congressional investigation into potential crimes committed by the people he will be meeting in the White House.

    Nunes also revealed that said “he discovered the potential surveillance of Trump himself while reviewing intelligence reports,” but he did not divulge that he kept his discovery from the Democrats on the committee who “appeared blindsided by Nunes’ announcement.”

    ………………

    When Nunes arrives at the White House and begins sharing information about which Transition officials were captured on “incidental surveillance,” he will be committing what appears to be an obvious crime.

    He claims that the surveillance is unrelated to Russia, and that may be his only criminal defense. He better hope that it will stand up in court. His press conference performance was a dishonest attempt to suggest that perhaps Trump wasn’t completely wrong when he said that Trump Tower was wiretapped at the behest of President Obama. He couldn’t assert either of those things but he made it seem like he had evidence pointing in that direction.

  13. 13.

    rikyrah

    March 22, 2017 at 4:30 pm

    Why Was Paul Manafort Hired in the First Place?
    by Martin Longman March 22, 2017 1:15 PM

    One thing I don’t understand about Paul Manafort is how he had the courage to rip off a Russian oligarch who is good friends with Vladimir Putin and who, according to Forbes, is worth $5.2 billion. But that’s what he did:

    Manafort’s work with [Oleg] Deripaska continued for years, though they had a falling out laid bare in 2014 in a Cayman Islands bankruptcy court. The billionaire gave Manafort nearly $19 million to invest in a Ukrainian TV company called Black Sea Cable, according to legal filings by Deripaska’s representatives. It said that after taking the money, Manafort and his associates stopped responding to Deripaska’s queries about how the funds had been used.

    Early in the 2016 presidential campaign, Deripaska’s representatives openly accused Manafort of fraud and pledged to recover the money from him. After Trump earned the nomination, Deripaska’s representatives said they would no longer discuss the case.

    …………………..

    Also worth noting: Deripaska is barred from traveling to the United States because of supposed ties to organized crime. So why was Manafort doing business with Deripaska, and why would Manafort seemingly be so foolish as to rob a mobster of millions of dollars?

  14. 14.

    different-church-lady

    March 22, 2017 at 4:36 pm

    HOLY FUCKIN’ GOD I CAN PUNCH WASHINGTON MONTHLY INTO MY OWN BROWSER IF I WANT TO.

  15. 15.

    Mnemosyne

    March 22, 2017 at 4:40 pm

    @rikyrah:

    I still think that Trump has ties to Russian mobsters and that’s what Nunes went to the White House to tell them about. Not spying (or not just spying), but ties to organized crime.

    No wonder Trump was so desperate to get Sessions confirmed first thing. There’s no other way for him to quash that organized crime investigation.

  16. 16.

    Gin & Tonic

    March 22, 2017 at 4:43 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    There’s no other way for him to quash that organized crime investigation.

    Maybe, but he can’t lean on the NYS AG, who doesn’t like him much, and who certainly has jurisdiction given the location of Trump Tower.

  17. 17.

    TenguPhule

    March 22, 2017 at 4:44 pm

    @rikyrah:

    When Nunes arrives at the White House and begins sharing information about which Transition officials were captured on “incidental surveillance,” he will be committing what appears to be an obvious crime.

    Which will of course go unpunished because Nazis control the Department of Justice now.

  18. 18.

    Mnemosyne

    March 22, 2017 at 4:44 pm

    @different-church-lady:

    Um. Okay?

  19. 19.

    JPL

    March 22, 2017 at 4:46 pm

    In the words of that famous judge, Cecily Strong, from SNL people’s court

    “I want one day without a CNN alert that scares the hell out of me, all right?

    It’s not going to happen though. President Obama needs to come back from whichever island he’s on and save us.

  20. 20.

    Bruce K

    March 22, 2017 at 4:48 pm

    Thinking back to the comment from a few days back about Senator Feinstein’s thunderstruck reaction to being briefed by Comey.

    I did some digging and finally found an appropriate clip on Youtube:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAZYKDVkAeA

    (For the benefit of those who can’t access it, it’s a discussion between the shipowner, J. Bruce Ismay, who believes the Titanic to be unsinkable, and the shipbuilder, Thomas Andrews, who’s just figured out that the ship is doomed.)

  21. 21.

    Brachiator

    March 22, 2017 at 4:53 pm

    @Roger Moore:

    Come on! We all know that “fiscal responsibility” means spending money on white people.

    People are just jealous! Why should Trump have to step down from his standard of living just because he is president? He probably suffers anguish just from having to live in that second rate heap, the White House. It would be like the British making the Queen stay in one of her smaller palaces.

    More seriously, Trump seems a rigid creature of habit. He likes relaxing at Mar-a-Largo, where he can have the slack-jawed yokels who are members of the club can gawk at him while he plays at being president. And he is used to sticking other people with the bill. I get the impression that many of his supporters are in sync with him. They are fine with the idea of the government having to foot the bill, because Trump is one of theirs. It’s only when the government spends money on … those other people ;;; that there is any outrage.

  22. 22.

    Ian

    March 22, 2017 at 4:56 pm

    Having a hard time wrapping my head around

    The funding request, Which was rejected

    So what exactly happens when they overrun their funding limits? Maybe a better question for Adam S.

    They obviously have to provide security, and the Ill Douche’s family ain’t gonna quite grifting, where does the rubber meet the road?

  23. 23.

    rikyrah

    March 22, 2017 at 5:04 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    I still think that Trump has ties to Russian mobsters and that’s what Nunes went to the White House to tell them about. Not spying (or not just spying), but ties to organized crime.

    Let’s say this again..

    NUNES HAS RUSSIAN BUSINESS PARTNERS WITH TIES TO PUTIN!!!

  24. 24.

    Yarrow

    March 22, 2017 at 5:06 pm

    @rikyrah: Yes. Yes, he does. Nunes is in with the Russians as well. No wonder he went to warn his good buddy Donald about the investigation. Nunes needs to recuse himself or he needs to be arrested.

  25. 25.

    Roger Moore

    March 22, 2017 at 5:15 pm

    @Yarrow:

    Nunes needs to recuse himself or he needs to be arrested.

    Felony obstruction of justice would clear the “Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace” limits on when Members of Congress may be arrested.

  26. 26.

    Yarrow

    March 22, 2017 at 5:17 pm

    @Roger Moore: It certainly would.

  27. 27.

    JPL

    March 22, 2017 at 5:19 pm

    @Yarrow: Comey mentioned that republican computers were hacked also. hmmm

  28. 28.

    SFAW

    March 22, 2017 at 5:33 pm

    @rikyrah:

    Mr. Trump’s Twitter persona seems to have shifted from puckish to paranoid.

    “Puckish”? In what plane of existence (I almost wrote “reality”) have Shitgibbon’s tweets ever been “puckish”?

  29. 29.

    zhena gogolia

    March 22, 2017 at 5:35 pm

    @SFAW:

    I think there’s been a typo, a p for an f.

  30. 30.

    Denali

    March 22, 2017 at 5:37 pm

    @Feathers,

    Has anyone been keeping track of the number of laws that this administration has openly violated? Is there any number that is a tipping point? Do laws not mean anything anymore?

  31. 31.

    Brachiator

    March 22, 2017 at 5:39 pm

    @Denali:

    Has anyone been keeping track of the number of laws that this administration has openly violated? I

    Not sure of the total number, but the list is huuuuge!

  32. 32.

    SiubhanDuinne

    March 22, 2017 at 5:51 pm

    @Feathers:

    There is also the issue that this is against the law. After Nixon bought a second house in Florida, Congress passed a law saying that future Presidents could only designate one residence to be protected by the Secret Service. That seems to have gone out the window.

    Didn’t know this. I remember when Nixon bought a place in Florida (IIRC, it was close to the home of his friend and advisor Bebe Rebozo or Bobo Rebeelzebub or whatever the guy’s name was) but if I ever knew there was a law limiting the number of SS protected residences per POTUS, I had forgotten.

    I know the SS protects Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter’s home in Plains, and of course they protect the persons of the former First Couple everywhere they go, but I guess another entity provides security for the physical buildings at The Carter Center, where the Carters have living quarters they use when they stay over in Atlanta.

  33. 33.

    SFAW

    March 22, 2017 at 5:52 pm

    @Denali:

    Do laws not mean anything anymore?

    IOKIYAR

  34. 34.

    TenguPhule

    March 22, 2017 at 6:01 pm

    @Ian:

    So what exactly happens when they overrun their funding limits?

    They cut back on other stuff, like chasing counterfeiters and looking for lost children.

  35. 35.

    TenguPhule

    March 22, 2017 at 6:02 pm

    @Denali:

    Do laws not mean anything anymore?

    They don’t. Which is why its going to end badly for all of us.

  36. 36.

    SiubhanDuinne

    March 22, 2017 at 6:03 pm

    @Denali:

    Has anyone been keeping track of the number of laws that this administration has openly violated?

    All of them, Katie.

    Is there any number that is a tipping point?

    None of them, Katie.

    Do laws not mean anything anymore?

    Apparently not, Katie.

  37. 37.

    Roger Moore

    March 22, 2017 at 6:05 pm

    @Denali:

    Has anyone been keeping track of the number of laws that this administration has openly violated?

    All of them, Katie.

    It had to be said.

    ETA: @SiubhanDuinne: I guess soft minds run together.

  38. 38.

    SiubhanDuinne

    March 22, 2017 at 6:32 pm

    @Roger Moore:

    Whenever I think the “All of them, Katie” meme has definitely exceeded its shelf life, there’s invariably a perfect new opportunity to use it!

  39. 39.

    Steeplejack (tablet)

    March 22, 2017 at 6:53 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Heh, glad I read to the end of the thread. I hate the “All of them, Katie” meme, and I was about to use it myself! Trump fatigue, I haz it.

  40. 40.

    cynthia ackerman

    March 22, 2017 at 7:42 pm

    That cartoon version of Eric T (is he Ouday or Kousay?) holding an elephant’s tail kills me.

  41. 41.

    Jack the Second

    March 22, 2017 at 7:46 pm

    @schrodingers_cat: I’d call it worse than that. Reputation is what others think of you; honor is what you know to be true of yourself.

    Trump is also pissing away our honor, day by day, order by order. It is not merely that the world thinks worse of us; we know ourselves to be worse.

  42. 42.

    schrodingers_cat

    March 22, 2017 at 7:54 pm

    @Jack the Second: I can’t say I disagree.

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