First Lady takes 16th vacation on the taxpayers' dime

First Lady Michelle Obama has just returned from a Presidents' Day jaunt to Aspen, Colorado, with her two daughters. This marks the 16th trip in total the First Family has taken in the three years since the family patriarch became president. Some of these trips have been just Michelle on her own with her children.

The trips aren't your average little weekend road trip to the family cottage either. The First Lady's choice of travel includes five-star resort stays in places like Europe, South Africa, New York City and regular trips to Hawaii. When you add in all the costs associated with this, including Secret Service, additional security, personal staff, meals, lodging and the like, we taxpayers are footing quite a hefty bill for the First Lady's entertainment. Some estimates put it at approximately $10 million. The Hawaii Reporter said the family's 2011 Christmas trip to Hawaii alone exceeded $1.5 million.

At a time when a record number of Americans are on food stamps and few can even afford to take a vacation because they're just trying to make basic ends meet, the First Family's flagrant disregard for struggling Americans and their unconscionable spending of taxpayers' money is nothing short of contemptuous. And yet they say they're the ones who care about the middle class and the poor. Somehow their posturing hardly rings true.

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