Clinton wastes more money than Starr!!
Superman
By THOMAS HARGROVE
Scripps Howard News Service
June 02, 2000
WASHINGTON - Although President Clinton boasts about his domestic agenda, he
also has set records for foreign travel by a chief executive with 47
official trips to 63 nations.
During his two terms, Clinton has spent 226 days abroad, according to a
travel log obtained from the National Security Council, which oversees the
president's foreign excursions. That figure does not include his eight-day
trip to Portugal, Germany, Russia and the Ukraine ending Monday.
No chief executive in U.S. history has come close to this level of travel.
The only president in the jet-age to complete two full terms, Ronald Reagan,
spent 120 days abroad in a series of 26 trips, according to travel logs
obtained from Reagan's presidential library in Simi Valley, Calif. Clinton
seems certain to at least double Reagan's total travel before he leaves
office in January.
President Dwight Eisenhower did relatively little foreign travel and was
incapacitated by a heart attack during his presidency. No other president
has had the necessary time in office and access to jet transportation to
challenge Clinton's record.
"Even though there are a great many trips to be made, this president has
made more than any other," Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., complained during
floor budget debates last year.
Clinton's rate of travel has increased steadily through his administration.
He spent only eight days abroad in 1993 during trips to Korea, Japan and
Canada. Last year, he was out of the country for 50 days in 11 separate
trips that included Macedonia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Morocco, New Zealand,
Turkey and Kosovo.
White House officials bristle at suggestions that Clinton's rate of travel
is the result of frustration over his status as a lame duck who can
accomplish little with the Republican-dominated Congress.
"There is an emphasis on domestic issues because the president has said,
from the beginning, that he's going to be an activist president until the
last day he's here," White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart said last
year.
But Clinton's agenda appears to be increasingly focusing on foreign matters,
where he can claim successes. In Germany on Friday, he was awarded the
prestigious International Charlemagne Prize for his work in promoting
European unity.
"This trip, at least in part, is an opportunity to take stock of the
progress that has been made and to build on the vision that the president
articulated in 1994 (of) a peaceful, undivided, democratic Europe for the
first time in history," National Security Adviser Samuel Berger said last
week when explaining the purpose of Clinton's current eight-day travel.
Congress is increasingly critical of the cost of Clinton's trips. Republican
senators ordered the General Accounting Office to conduct a spot check by
auditing the cost of three trips the president made to Africa, China and
Chile in 1998.
The most expensive of these was Clinton's six-nation tour of Africa, which
included a retinue of more than 200 White House aides, 13 helicopters and
enough communication and security equipment to require 98 air cargo
missions. The tally for the trip was $43 million.
The GAO estimated the cost of all three trips that year at $72.1 million, of
which 84 percent was charged to the Department of Defense, which supplied
the necessary military transport aircraft.
"Does not it appear excessive to pin $72 million on three trips billed as
goodwill tours?" asked Rep. Joel Hefley, R-Colo., in a House floor statement
late last year. "Bill Clinton gets my Porker-of-the-Week Award."
Clinton apparently set an all-time record in travel expenses in March during
a nine-day trip to India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Switzerland. The U.S. Air
Force estimated it spent as much as $75 million to provide an armada of 76
transport and support aircraft for the trips, although a final tally has not
been released.
"I don't think there has been a time in recent history where a president has
embarked on a foreign tour in the extensive way that he did and come up
totally empty-handed," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. "It again emphasizes
the need for a steady hand at the tiller, a person who is interested really
in foreign policy and doesn't view it as a photo op, which apparently this
trip was primarily motivated to achieve."