Cost Cutting Travel Tips from the White House

Once again Obama has spoken out against the wastefulness of taking planes to Las Vegas and spending money there. And while some Nevada lawmakers are criticizing his remarks, I for one fully support and endorse them.

It is wasteful to take a plane trip to Vegas. The right way to travel is to fly 18 congressmen along with their spouses and families on three jets to Copenhagen for stays at a five star hotel. And with a roundtrip cost of as much as a 160,000 dollars per jet, that's the sort of affordable getaway that any well connected politician should be able to take at taxpayer expense. (It would sure take you a while to lose that much money in Vegas.)

Flying commercial jets to Vegas is not the way to go. The way to go is to buy 200 million dollars worth of Gulfstream jets to ferry around members of congress to all sorts of very "important" conferences, where they won't have to sit next to the common First Class rabble, or have flight attendants tell them to stop talking on their cell phones when they're on the phone discussing health care with the damn Senate Majority leader.

The right way to cut costs on a vacation is to fly your wife to New York City overnight in a jet plane, along with two other jet planes, one for your staff and for your press corps so they can come and report on your date. And then you can go see a play about sharecroppers trying to make it in the big city, before flying back home in those same jets.

A great way to get a neat postcard to send home to a few thousand of your biggest donors is to fly a jet plane over to New York City, and then send a second jet to take a photo of the first jet, while causing panic in the streets below. At a mere 1/3rd of a million dollars, this makes it the most expensive postcard ever since Napoleon decided to invade Egypt in order to get a picture of himself standing next to a Sphinx.

The ideal budget conscious family reunion involves requisitioning military jets to shuttle your children and grandchildren around the country, because flying JetBlue is for people who aren't related to the House Speaker. And for people whose last name happens to be Pelosi, there's JetRedWhiteandBlue, keeping America safe from terror, when they aren't busy transporting the entire Pelosi clan across America.

But you know, we all have to tighten our belts. We all make sacrifices. Such as flying to Copenhagen with a major celebrity in order to give a speech before an adoring crowd of admirers about bringing the Olympics to Chicago... when you know you have better odds of bringing Mount Olympus to Chicago.

It's hard for little people like us to appreciate the full magnitude of the sacrifice involved in taking a break from doing nothing except trying on increasingly ugly designer outfits, in order to fly along with television's most famous talk show host and talk about how hard it is for kids to get the funds to buy a bike... when the cost your trip alone could pay for a bike for every poor kid in the vicinity of Chicago, and maybe all of Illinois.

Still you sacrifice and you strive, always looking to your mentors, like Gandhi, who walked on broken glass in his bare feet, and you try to follow in their footsteps. So that whenever your campaign raised more money from that great grassroots movement, each time you upgraded your jet In the famous words of Martin Luther King Jr, "We shall rise up, and upgrade from our Gulfstreams to our Boeing 737's to our McDonnell Douglas MD-80s and even finally unto a superfantastic Boeing 757 painted with my own preemptive seal, until finally at least we come into the promised land, where we all fly three jets just to go pick up a pretzel. Amen."

And when you fly the friendly skies, it is vitally important to have the right drinks on board. Courvoisier cognac, Johnny Walker Red scotch, Grey Goose vodka, E&J brandy, Bailey’s Irish Crème, Bacardi Light rum, Jim Beam whiskey, Beefeater gin, Dewars scotch and Bombay Sapphire gin... in these troubled times of fear and doubt, nothing is too good for our hardworking public servants who need to relax occasionally between their "sacrificing" with a hundred grand worth of "in flight services".

And if the kith and kin of these great men and women, whose traveling costs we are privileged to bear on our generous backs, should sample some of the booze-- only the vilest ingrate would dare frown on their merry frivolity. For we must all tighten our belts, some of us over our wallets and some of us over a humble meal of Sparkling Chardonnay, chocolate dipped fruit, Arugula With Onion Seed Vinaigrette and Green Curry Prawns... in the intimate company of 220 dinner guests.

And of course no one could begrudge you a 125 dollar a pound Wagyu steak for your inauguration dinner. But don't worry, you too could raise a glass with Nancy Pelosi at a dinner prepared by celebrity female chefs, so long as you can pony up 30,400 dollars for a ticket.

But don't worry the White House is tightening belts... on soldiers meals abroad which cost an outrageous 30 to 40 dollars. Why for that money you could buy one of the peas on one of the plates at a White House state dinner. Or one of the buttons on Michelle Obama's "accident in a curtain factory" dresses, or shoes created through the unique method of stepping on a diseased leopard. Just think of those vile soldiers gobbling up money that should be rightfully spent to fly Nancy Pelosi's spawn to return her overdue library books or buy Michelle Obama a new purse to carry along with her when she goes to hand out slops to the unemployed folks down at the homeless shelter. Clearly we need to get those troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan now! How else can Barack Obama afford to spend a quarter of a million dollars just to fly to Chicago to give a speech pushing his own partisan health care boondoggle.

It is of course important to save money on travel costs. Especially when you've spent 13 percent of your first half year in office, flying around the world, at the expense of Air Taxpayer. We could do the math on the cost of all those trips, but it would probably just be cheaper to buy bikes for every kid in America, and parts of Canada and Australia.

But some trips just can't be put off. Like when the Chief of the EPA and her staff have to travel to Florida to give a speech to the Black Journalists of America. Or when a Congressional Delegation of 56 congressmen just gotta travel to Louisiana to “view flood relief advances from Hurricane Katrina". While some actual victims of Hurricane Katrina are still homeless.

"When times are tough, you tighten your belts. You don't go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don't blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you're trying to save for college. You prioritize. You make tough choices. It's time your government did the same."

There's no doubt that Obama is right. When times are tight, you don't go blow a bunch of cash in Vegas. Unless you have to attend a Democratic National Committee fundraising event. Unless you have to fly their with your retinue in tow. Then suddenly traveling to Vegas is good and proper. But the good news is it only cost you a quarter of a million dollars.

Truly in these hard times, we must take our Dear Leader's lesson to heart. It's time to tighten our belts. To buy a few Gulfstream jets until we can upgrade them to a 757. To drink our Courvoisier cognac with our Wagyu beef and run for office, so the taxpayer gets the bill.

Let's all raise a glass to cost cutting measures from the White House. Salud. Cheers.