Presidential’ vs. ‘Political’ Trips: A Blurry Line, and Tricky Math

By JACKIE CALMES / Published: April 21, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/us/politics/presidential-vs-political-trips-a-blurry-line-for-obama.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=todayspaper

WASHINGTON — Facing 5,000 enthusiastic students at Florida Atlantic University, President Obama rolled up his sleeves and raised his voice to chastise Republicans for their spending cuts and “broken-down theories,” evoking chants of “Four more years!”

And that was the nonpolitical stop on Mr. Obama’s swing-state itinerary for that day early this month. The president sandwiched the 34-minute speech, billed as an official address on his so-called Buffett Rule for a minimum tax rate for the wealthiest Americans, amid three overtly partisan fund-raisers that accounted for the bulk of his time along the south Florida coast.

Mixing policy and politics, Mr. Obama is picking up the pace of his travel with that ultimate incumbent’s perk — unlimited use of Air Force One. The trips are mostly to about a dozen swing states that will decide the election and to two reliably Democratic states, New York and California, for campaign money.

And Mr. Obama is not the only frequent flier with a re-election agenda. Both Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the first lady, Michelle Obama, are increasingly stumping around the country as the campaign seeks to repeat its fund-raising success of 2008 and counter a building wave of G.O.P. cash.

The trips yield a payoff not only in donations — collected at small-crowd, big-dollar events in the sumptuous homes of donors and at small-dollar, big-crowd rallies — but also in local headlines trumpeting Mr. Obama’s message of the day. Taken together, they raise the quadrennial question of how much of a president’s travel should be paid for by taxpayers and how much by his party.

“It’s very opaque,” said Meredith McGehee, policy director of the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan group. “You’re kind of left in the position of, ‘Trust us; we’re doing it right.’ ”

Since Mr. Obama filed for re-election a year ago, he has taken 60 domestic trips, of which 26 included fund-raisers, according to Mark Knoller, a White House correspondent for CBS News who for years has compiled such data.

Mr. Knoller’s count shows that since Mr. Obama took office, his most frequent destinations besides Maryland, Virginia and Illinois, his home state, have been fund-raising centers and swing states: New York (23 visits), Ohio (20), Florida (16), Pennsylvania (15), Michigan (11), California and North Carolina (10 each), Massachusetts (9), Wisconsin (8), Iowa and Nevada (7 each), and Colorado (6).

On Wednesday, Mr. Obama made an official visit to an Ohio community college and a political trip to Michigan for two fund-raisers. This week, he is scheduled to visit North Carolina, Iowa and Colorado for official addresses on student loans at three campuses, prime territory for his drive to motivate young voters.

Officials at the White House, the Chicago campaign headquarters and the Democratic National Committee declined to say how they decide which events are political and how much to reimburse the government. That secrecy has a tradition dating at least to the late 1970s.

Katie Hogan, a campaign spokeswoman, said, “The campaign will follow all rules and pay for the portion of travel that relates to political events, as has been true for previous incumbent presidential candidates.”

A White House spokesman, Eric Schultz, said, “As in other administrations, we follow all rules and regulations to ensure that the D.N.C. or other relevant political committee pays what is required for the president to travel to political events.”

While it is not possible to know for sure, the Democratic Party is probably paying more than other presidents have for Air Force One because of a regulatory change in 2010. Instead of repaying the government based on the cost of first-class commercial airfare, as presidents had since Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald R. Ford, reimbursements must now reflect the cost of chartering a 737 aircraft. (Air Force One, the name for whichever plane in the fleet carries the president, is usually a 747.)

Past presidents have been accused of adding official events to political trips to reduce their campaign’s spending, but Mr. Schultz said that was no longer an issue. “The fact that there is an official event on the schedule doesn’t reduce the travel costs paid by the campaign to the federal government,” he said.

The Democratic Party’s latest monthly report of travel reimbursements, filed last week to the Federal Election Commission, had precise entries like $3.82 for “White House Airlift In-flight services” — a sandwich from the Air Force One galley perhaps? — and 23 payments totaling nearly $100,000 for airfare, including $95,759.10 to White House Airlift Operations and $3,833.19 to the Treasury Department. Aides would not describe what trip, traveler or expense were reflected by each entry.

Expenses are not limited to Air Force One, which costs $179,750 an hour for “fuel, flight consumables, depot repairs, aircraft overhaul and engine overhaul,” according to the Pentagon. For years, presidential travel has included at least two other aircraft: a backup plane and a military cargo plane to ferry Secret Service vehicles, helicopters on occasion and the president’s customized limousine, nicknamed “the Beast.”

The White House press secretary, Jay Carney, quizzed by reporters last week about Mr. Obama’s travel, said: “The president is the president 24 hours a day and seven days a week, and he has to fly on Air Force One. He has to have security and communication. There are elements of his job that are always with him, regardless of whether he’s in a campaign event or an official event. And costs are apportioned accordingly.”

Mr. Carney’s predecessors made similar arguments, including Republicans, though Republican operatives are quick to criticize Mr. Obama.

“There’s a feeling out there that the president is putting more time and energy into his campaign than putting forth solutions to help the country,” said Kirsten Kukowski, spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee.

Michael Berman, a Democratic lobbyist who was a lawyer in the Carter White House, said the Ford White House sought to make nearly full reimbursements for campaign-related use of Air Force One. But Mr. Berman devised the first-class airfare formulation that both parties used until 2010.

“You don’t want to penalize the person who’s in office,” Mr. Berman said, by forcing him to cover all expenses for security, for example. “But they also shouldn’t have an advantage.”

News accounts covering more than three decades and six presidents back through Mr. Carter — three from each party — attest to the recurring controversy.

President George Bush made more political trips “than any president in history” before the 1990 midterm elections, The Los Angeles Times wrote, and “by mixing official and political travel” passed much of the cost to taxpayers. Bill Clinton, newly re-elected, “may well have set a record for political travel” in 1997 as he flew to fund-raisers to erase Democrats’ debt, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

And George W. Bush was “using Air Force One for re-election travel more heavily than any predecessor, wringing maximum political mileage from a perk of office paid for by taxpayers,” The Associated Press wrote in 2004.

Thirty years ago, Ronald Reagan made an “official” visit to Ohio before the midterm elections and told his audience about all the positive things he would have liked to say about the Republican candidates for governor and senator who were there.

But, he added, “This isn’t a political rally, so I won’t say any of those things!”