New Obama vacation costs uncovered; They now exceed $70 million

As Barack, Michelle, Malia and Sasha Obama, family, friends, pets and staff enjoy their half-month-long Hawaiian vacation, the Secret Service finally complied with a court order to release some Obama vacation expenses from two years ago.

Expensive shaved ice. Evan Vucci/AP

That's how eager the Obama administration is about being transparent when it comes to spending large sums of taxpayers' money on itself.

As with the slow-motion releases of Hillary Clinton's emails, the idea of bureaucratic stalling, of course, is that the details become "old" news more likely to be ignored by media. Fortunately, we're not on vacation this week, so we can help the president out. Here goes:

The new expense reports, heavily-redacted allegedly for security reasons, push the total known costs for vacations during Obama's reign to nearly $71 million -- with another full year to go. That's about $10.1 million per year in known expenses.

The totals come from Judicial Watch, the dogged watchdog group that pursues such information through repeated Freedom of Information Act requests.

Earlier this year Judicial Watch obtained transportation costs for a pair of the Democrat's cross-country golf weekends just in 2015. They totaled nearly $2 million, or $20,000 per hole, the Washington Examiner calculated.

Read the rest of Andrew Malcolm's op-ed HERE.

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