Dakota Beacon

What could you do with an expense account of half a million dollars per year?  I don’t know about you, but most of my acquaintances could paint the world a pretty shade of red on that. 

The reason I ask is, why don’t we expand on Congressman Gohmert’s famous bill to put the cork in Barack Obama’s golf sprees while the White House is closed to the people who paid for it? 

Why don’t we get someone with the guts to next introduce a bill which would give our “First Family” a magnificent half-million dollars to spend on whatever they want – Air Force One, Broadway shows, fine wines, St. Louis pizza, Oscar night gowns, golf outings in Florida with Tiger Woods, fun in the sun and surf in Hawaii, beer drinking in Dublin pubs, $500 sneakers, $1,000 tote bags, spring breaks for Malia in Mexico or $97,000/year calligraphers.  Any little thing their hearts desire.  But not, probably, all of those things.

I recently read in a piece by Glenn Beck, that England’s Royal Family, which is fairly extensive, and all of whom maintain lavish estates, stables, kennels, castles, yachts and lots of  enormous hats, in the latest of high fashions, manage to do it at the indulgent cost of some $57.8 million.  Remember – there are a lot of them and really only four Obamas, since he has basically disowned his birth family in the interest of shoring up his legitimacy in the White House.  So we should be able to do a bit better. 

Now, $500,000 is, of course, considerably less than $57,800,000.  But, as I say, there ARE only four of them, thank God.  And they have some distance to make up here.  According to Beck, and I haven’t heard this refuted, last year alone, the Obama family spent $1,400,000,000 on their lifestyle.  The $97,000 head calligrapher should have told us that even if their little $4,000,000 Christmas party in Hawaii didn’t.  So if they just find a way to coast through the next four years on that $500,000, they will have spent plenty anyway. 

These people are the ones who are telling us to tighten our belts, to economize, and finally, to tell the “rich” to pay for it.  How “rich” do you need to be to spend $1,400,000,000 on yourself?

At a time like this, when many are losing their jobs, their homes, their children’s futures and most likely their health, I think to myself, “What would George Washington, our first and probably greatest president, have done?”  The answer is, he would have already spent most of his personal fortune melting down his own silver service to pay for food and clothing and other provisions for his men in the field of battle, men with whom he shared that field himself in the dead of winter and the stifling heat of summer.  He would have been ashamed to have taken money from their families to behave like the monarch we had just finished overthrowing. It would have been far beneath him.  Indeed, the Romanovs even toned it way down during World War I, when millions were suffering.  The Grand Duchesses slept on plain Army cots and wore simple garments – seeing as how it would have been regarded as in poor taste to flaunt wealth while their people did without. 

A Washington is the kind of president we need now.  One focused on preserving and defending America and its people and not robbing them to pay for childish stuff like Beyonce the like.

The current issue of “sequestration” gives us a perfect opening to address this.  Believe me, this is no laughing matter, it’s not a joke.  Our country is going under, our families are suffering, our economy is tanking and our currency is hanging by a thread.  Our current “leader” has just allowed the release of dangerous criminals because we “can’t afford to keep them incarcerated”, thus endangering innocent American people – people he is pledged to defend and protect.  If nothing else, a more adult attitude toward money in the White House would show the world – and more importantly, the American people – that there is the will and the intention to do something about this mess. 

When you think about the contrast between the humility of a great leader like George Washington and the tasteless, graceless gluttony (and - dare I say it - lack of class) of the Obama regime, it seems obvious that the American people deserve and must demand a halt to this insulting behavior. (And while we're at it we should soundly condemn those feeding at his trough.)

So, who will step up and propose this bill?  An expense account – a diet, if you will for a financially obese family of nouveau riche hedonists.  Here’s an idea:  we can call it “Let’s Move!”

Sally Morris is a member of Americans for Constitutional Government.