First term senator's charges nearly 45% higher than his classmates

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama's two years in the Senate have taken him around the world, from Russia to Iraq to Kenya - an itinerary more costly to taxpayers than any other senator who took office with him.

The Illinois Democrat's travels in 2005 and 2006 cost taxpayers nearly $28,000 as he studied nuclear proliferation, AIDS, Middle Eastern violence and more.

Eight other freshmen senators took office in 2005, and about $19,200 was the most anyone spent for government-paid travel, according to reports filed with the Senate Office of Public Records.

Obama, who announced his candidacy Saturday for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, was one of two freshmen members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the 109th Congress. He spent $18,822 in per diem and transportation costs in 2006 as he visited Middle East hotspots and toured Africa. The previous year he spent $8,313 visiting the former Soviet Union and the United Kingdom.

The freshman with the next greatest spending on taxpayer-funded trips was Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., whose visits included China, Russia and the Middle East at a cost of about $19,200. Ranking third was freshman Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who spent $17,867 to visit China and Kuwait, among other places. Neither is a member of the Foreign Relations Committee.

However, other freshmen also took trips - both foreign and domestic - funded by private groups, which Obama does not accept. If Coburn's privately funded trips are included, his total travel amounts to nearly $29,000 for the two years, more than any other freshman.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17165679/


An oldie but a goodie - Sen. Obama attempting to pad his resume at the taxpayer's expense.

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Our nation has not always lived up to its ideals, yet those ideals have never ceased to guide us. They expose our flaws, and lead us to mend them. We are the beneficiaries of the work of the generations before us and it is each generation's responsibility to continue that work. - Laura Bush

God is a conservative -

Ecclesiastes 10:2--"A wise man's heart inclines him to the right, but a fool's heart to the left."

I've been listening to his world help your neighbor stuff, and I think he sees a bigger picture.

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Salty

THANKSGIVING MENUS AND TIPS

A GREAT PLACE TO SHOP

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Right now America spends $700 billion every year on foreign oil. That's our money going overseas when it could be staying here. We have to stop this.
That's why I support the Pickens Plan. Check out the website at www.pickensplan.com. If you like what you see, please join me as a Pickens Plan supporter.

If a certain course of action makes the mouth-breathers furious, then that’s a good policy. – The Practical Environmentalist

More (inconvenient) facts from the same article.

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Right now America spends $700 billion every year on foreign oil. That's our money going overseas when it could be staying here. We have to stop this.
That's why I support the Pickens Plan. Check out the website at www.pickensplan.com. If you like what you see, please join me as a Pickens Plan supporter.

If a certain course of action makes the mouth-breathers furious, then that’s a good policy. – The Practical Environmentalist