Barack Obama’s Christmas Vacation

Having “won” a fight that will result in a two-month extension of an inconsequential tax cut (as opposed to a one-year extension), U.S. President Barack Obama flew off to Hawaii on Friday for a 17-day vacation that will cost taxpayers an estimated $4 million.

Before departing, though, Obama approved an additional $113 million in foreign aid for poor people in Sub-Saharan Africa – where the U.S. has already spent $870 million this year.

These numbers are drops in the bucket of our $15.1 trillion debt, obviously, but still … that’s money we don’t have to spend going to pay for social welfare in other countries.

Obama claims he’s responding to “heartbreaking accounts” from the region … but he’s clearly not heartbroken enough over the situation to forgo his costly two-and-a-half week trip to Hawaii (which could have defrayed some of his government-funded benevolence).

And while Obama is paying for his own vacation rental home this time (quite the sacrifice seeing as taxpayers are paying him $400,000 a year on top of literally all his expenses), it’s worth noting that his staff is staying in $450 a night hotel rooms at the luxurious Moana Surfrider Hotel.

The last time we checked more than 146 million Americans were classified as poor and low-income thanks to Obama’s policies (and the increasingly Keystone Kop antics of Congressional Republicans who are supposed to be “opposing” those policies).