CNN “Situation Room” anchor Wolf Blitzer told The Daily Caller that he is “sure” the Obama campaign and White House are “going by the rules” regarding presidential visits verses campaign events.
TheDC asked Blitzer about House Speaker John Boehner calling on the Obama campaign to pay the cost of President Obama’s recent college visits, during which he addressed student loan interest rates in a series of speeches. (SEE ALSO: Obama, WH officials visit more than 130 universities, schools in massive campaign for young voters)
“I know there’s a formula when any incumbent president is seeking re-election — how they figure out what the campaign pays verses what taxpayers pay,” Blitzer told TheDC at the White House Correspondents Dinner.
“I’m sure they’re going by the rules, whatever those rules are, maybe the rules need to be changed but every president I’ve covered, I’ve covered a lot of them for 30 years, they have a certain formula, what the taxpayers get reimbursed for from campaign expenditures and I’m sure they’re working on that.”
Boehner said the president’s trip to three battleground states was a campaign tour and not a presidential event.
“This week the president traveled across the country on taxpayers dime at a cost of $179,000 an hour insisting that Congress fix a problem that we were already working on,” he said on April 26. (RELATED: Boehner: Obama should ‘pony up,’ reimburse taxpayers for ‘pathetic’ trip)
“Democrats and Republicans fully expected this would be taken care of, and for the president to make a campaign issue out of this and then to travel to three battleground states and go to three large college campuses on taxpayers’ money and to try to make this a political issue is pathetic, and his campaign ought to be reimbursing the treasury for the cost of this trip.”