Politics

Conservative watchdog group seeks cost details of first daughters’ tropical spring break trip

Vince Coglianese Editorial Director
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A conservative watchdog group wants to know exactly how much taxpayers are spending on the tropical spring break trip Sasha and Malia Obama are taking this week.

Judicial Watch has reportedly filed multiple Freedom of Information Act requests to the Obama administration asking for expense reports related to the girls’ vacation.

Securing members of the first family is an expensive business and requires a full complement of Secret Service resources to ensure their safety abroad.

Conservative critics have latched onto the first daughters’ vacation, citing the related taxpayer expenses as another example of government waste amid dramatized cutbacks related to the March 1 sequester.

“The Obamas’ unnecessary personal luxury travel is an abuse of office in this age of sequester, unemployment and out-of-control government debt,” Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton told Breitbart News, which first reported both the vacation and the Judicial Watch investigation.

Judicial Watch has had success seeking this type of information before.

The group successively sued the Secret Service last year for details about Malia Obama’s March 2012 spring break trip to Mexico. That vacation cost taxpayers $115,500.87, according to the group’s findings.

That would be enough money to fund nearly two weeks of White House tours — according to Secret Service estimates — which the Obama administration famously axed after the sequester hit.

And The Weekly Standard’s Daniel Halper noted Tuesday that the Obama family has already averaged a vacation a month in 2013.

The Daily Caller has confirmed details related to the first daughters’ ongoing spring break trip, but has opted not to report the specifics in the interest of security.

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Vince Coglianese