Michelle Obama Travel Expense Update: Your Tax Dollars at work

That sound you hear? ... is your Tax Dollars:

Just a quick update, as you organize to file your income taxes, on the Obama family's lavish travel expenses that your money is underwriting. Financing might be a better word.

Barack and Michelle Obama have traveled more than any other first couple -- doing Spain, Africa, China, South America, among other distant spots. Often they're accompanied by friends and Michelle Obama's Mom, Marian Robinson, who's been living in the White House at taxpayer expense since her son-in-law's inauguration. And in some cases, Mrs. Robinson's friends tag along.

By one accounting, as of last July the Obamas had spent more than $44.4 million in taxpayer money on travel for 31 international trips lasting 119 days. For comparison, at the same point in his presidency Ronald Reagan had made 14 trips lasting 73 days.

You may recall Michele Obama's controversial trip with friends to Spain's luxury Costa del Sol in 2010 at a time when the U.S. unemployment rate was 9.5% on the way to 9.8%. And President Obama's $1 trillion economic stimulus package had yet to kick in. Of course, it's still yet to kick in.

According to numbers gathered by Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates government corruption, that trip cost Americans at least $468,000.

Turns out, by Obama administration standards that was a bargain tour.

Mrs. Obama's latest foreign junket this month was to Japan and Cambodia, allegedly to promote an Agency for International Development program to encourage education for girls.

On a one-day, side-trip to visit two shrines in Kyoto, including one honoring a god of rice, Michelle Obama's party incurred almost $79,000 in expenses just for rental cars, Judicial Watch reports. That's a lot of tuition for girls! Or boys.

Read the rest of the story HERE.

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