Five Trump trips to Mar-a-Lago would cover Betsy Devos’s proposed Special Olympics cuts
By Philip Bump
March 27 at 9:41 AM
It’s not Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s fault that her department has to cut its budget. That’s a mandate coming down from her boss, President Trump.
But DeVos is the one to make specific recommendations about where those cuts should be made. On Tuesday, she appeared on Capitol Hill to defend them — including canceling out federal funding for the Special Olympics in next year’s budget.
“We had to make some difficult decisions with this budget,” DeVos told legislators, in defense of her proposals.
It’s worth putting those difficult decisions in context.
The Education Department budgeted $17,583,000 for the Special Olympics this fiscal year, an amount that obviously exceeds the average American’s annual income. It’s also an amount that constitutes about a tenth of the Special Olympics’ total budget.
It is also an amount that’s about equivalent to the cost of the president’s last five trips to Mar-a-Lago, a period that stretches back to Thanksgiving.
Last month, we reported on new data from the Government Accountability Office which determined that Trump’s trips to his private club in Florida cost taxpayers about $3.4 million apiece, largely as a function of transporting the president and support material to the state.
Looking at it another way, the federal government had spent about as much on getting Trump to Mar-a-Lago by his second month in office as DeVos now wants to cut from supporting the Special Olympics.
more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/27/five-trump-trips-mar-a-lago-would-cover-betsy-devoss-proposed-special-olympics-cuts/?utm_term=.c238a05ad2eb
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