The budget is dried up today. No more money to provide security.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics...mily-are-draining-the-secret-services-budget/
Trump and His Family Are Draining the Secret Service’s Budget
Constant travel is pushing the agency to its limit.
Russ ChomaAug. 21, 2017 1:24 PM
Eric Trump boards a helicopter during a July business trip to Scotland.Jane Barlow/PA Wire
In early June, Tiffany Trump decided to take a trip to Germany with her boyfriend, Ross Mechanic. They posed for Instagram pics, and paparazzi trailed them through Berlin. And so did Secret Service agents. When Eric Trump took 30 or so “businessmen” on a junket to Trump-owned golf courses in the British Isles, he also brought along a Secret Service detail. It’s not clear who Eric’s travel companions were, but he used the trip to promote his father’s golf courses to local media.
The total cost to taxpayers of these Trump family voyages is not yet known, but the pieces of data that have emerged are eye-opening.
USASpending.gov, which catalogues all federal government spending, details two hotel bills related to Tiffany Trump’s stay in Berlin totaling $19,289. The bills are labelled “URGENT!” and the first was filed just two days before Tiffany arrived in Germany, suggesting it was something of a last-minute trip. The same website shows two bills totaling just over $7,000 for hotel rooms in Dublin in late July in support of “E Trump Visit July 17.” In both cases, the adult Trump children continued on to other countries (Tiffany went to Hungary and Eric traveled to Scotland), so these line items may not even be the full amount that the Secret Service spent renting hotel rooms for agents to trail the president’s children. Nor do they include the cost of paying the agents for their round-the-clock work, their flights, their food, or any other costs incurred along the way.
This morning, USA Today reported that the costs of protecting Trump and his children—and their penchant for far-flung travel—is straining the Secret Service to its limits.
The agency’s director, Tex Alles, told the paper that more than 1,000 agents have already hit their federally mandated overtime caps. Agents are limited, by law, to a cap of $160,000 for their salary and overtime pay. But, Alles said, despite the limits on paying agents, the agency has to continue protecting the president and his progeny.
“The president has a large family, and our responsibility is required in law. I can’t change that. I have no flexibility,” Alles told the paper.
But the president and his family do have control over their travel. Besides his trips to Europe and the Middle East on official business and his rallies around the country, President Trump has left the White House nearly every weekend since taking office—decamping to one of his private clubs, sometimes for days at a time. Each trip requires planes, helicopters, motorcades, and dozens of agents. In May, conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch estimated that each hour Trump spends flying on Air Force One costs $142,000 and that each trip to Mar-A-Lago could cost taxpayers millions of dollars.
And while Tiffany Trump’s jaunt to Europe may be her first international trip as first daughter, her older brothers travel almost constantly—and, it seems, largely for the purpose of promoting family businesses. The July trip to Ireland wasn’t even Eric Trump’s first trip to the Emerald Isle this year. In April, he traveled to the Trump golf course in Doonbeg, Ireland. USASpending shows the Secret Service spent just over $11,000 on hotel rooms supporting that trip. And Secret Service hotel bills for an Eric Trump trip to Uruguay in January cost $97,000.
Again, those costs don’t include the salaries (and overtime) for the agents guarding Trump’s children or any other travel expenses. Just the hotels.
Trump doesn’t seem to be willing to cut the Secret Service any breaks. Earlier this month, the Washington Post reported that the Secret Service was abandoning a command post inside Trump Tower because of a dispute over rent—the Trump Organization is reported to be playing hardball with the agency over the lease.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligence...s-have-broken-the-secret-services-budget.html
The Trumps’ Travels Have Broken the Secret Service Budget
By
Eric Levitz
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Photo: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images
One week after launching his presidential campaign, in 2015, Donald Trump pledged to become a shut-in at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
“I would rarely leave the White House because there’s so much work to be done,” the mogul said. “I would not be a president who took vacations. I would not be a president that takes time off. You don’t have time to take time off.”
During his first seven months in office, Trump has taken seven trips to his resort in Mar-a-Lago, Florida; five to his golf club in Bedminister, New Jersey; and one to Trump Tower in Manhattan.
Each of those Florida trips is estimated to have cost more than $3 million. The president’s near-weekly retreats to the Sunshine State last winter put him on pace to spend more on travel in his first year than Barack Obama had spent during two full terms.
Meanwhile, the Secret Service was tasked with protecting Trump’s large, globe-trotting family. At present, the agency is responsible for maintaining constant watch over an unprecedented 42 protectees — up from 31 under Obama.
And providing security for Eric, Don Jr., Ivanka, and Tiffany is far more exhausting — and expensive — than doing so for Malia and Sasha. As USA Today reports:
Earlier this year, Eric Trump’s business travel to Uruguay cost the Secret Service nearly $100,000 just for hotel rooms. Other trips included the United Kingdom and the Dominican Republic. In February, both sons and their security details traveled to Vancouver, British Columbia, for the opening of new Trump hotel there, and to Dubai to officially open a Trump International Golf Club.
In March, security details accompanied part of the family, including Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner on a skiing vacation in Aspen, Colo. Even Tiffany Trump, the president’s younger daughter, took vacations with her boyfriend to international locales such as Germany and Hungary, which also require Secret Service protection.
Add to this the considerable costs of keeping Melania and Barron secure in the heart of New York City for much of this year; maintaining security at the Trump family’s various residences up and down the East Coast; and the myriad expenses inherent to hanging around a Trump luxury property (the Secret Service has racked up $60,000 in golf-cart bills at the president’s clubs), and you have a recipe for a budget crisis.
According to Secret Service director Randolph Alles, that crisis has already arrived. Alles told USA Today Monday that more than 1,000 of his agents have already hit the federal caps for yearly salary and overtime. Some veteran agents have already worked hundreds of overtime hours with no compensation.
The 2016 campaign was similarly taxing to the agency, with 1,400 agents collectively amassing thousands of overtime hours above compensation limits. Congress approved a measure to ensure that their labors didn’t go unrewarded. But this was a one-time fix, passed under the assumption that the agency’s burden was bound to let up considerably, once the election year was over.
That assumption has proven less than safe. And some fear that that same description might soon apply to those in the Secret Service’s care. Turnover at the agency has been understandably high — and its ability to recruit top talent has been hampered by all those punishing, uncompensated hours.
On Capitol Hill, there’s some bipartisan movement toward upping the Secret Service’s funding. But relief is unlikely to come before 150 foreign leaders converge on New York City next month for the United Nations General Assembly — an event that will require the Secret Service to operate at maximum vigilance, even as some 1,100 agents have already become ineligible for overtime pay.
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http://fortune.com/2017/08/24/trump-secret-service-budget-money-bankrupt/
Why Trump Should Start Paying for the Secret Service
Daniel J. Mitchell
Aug 24, 2017
The news that the Secret Service is way over budget because of President Donald Trump’s frequent vacations is a rich source of material for political satirists. It’s easy to zing Trump for being a hypocrite, as he previously complained about the cost and duration of President Barack Obama’s vacations. Trump is way ahead of his predecessor’s pace.
But let’s look at this issue from the perspective of taxpayers. Every time the president hops on Air Force One for a weekend getaway at one of his resorts, that involves a major shift of manpower by the Secret Service, along with major outlays for travel, lodging, and other costs. Now there’s talk of making the budget even bigger to accommodate all of Trump’s trips.
With the prospect of even higher Secret Service costs, it’s time to consider some sensible reforms that could limit the agency’s burden on taxpayers.
First, Congress should put an annual limit on expenditures for unofficial White House travel. Restricting the president’s ability to take taxpayer-funded vacations could be politically advantageous. According to a 2013 Center for Economic and Policy Research report, the average American gets 10 paid vacation days a year. Congress would likely get credit for bringing the president’s funded vacation time closer to that of the people he’s supposed to serve.
Presidents are not average, of course, so they should get taxpayer-financed protection for around four weeks of vacation. Any more than that would still have a Secret Service detail, but the president would have to pick up the incremental expenses, either personally or (more likely) by having their political party or campaign committee cover the cost.
There should also be similar restrictions for the presidential family, especially with regard to overseas business trips. If Trump’s children feel it is necessary to go overseas to sign a deal, then the company at the very least should pay half the cost for Secret Service protection. Congress could stipulate this when it writes its annual allocation of funds for the White House and the Department of Homeland Security, which runs the Secret Service.
Another reasonable reform would be to permanently expand the Secret Service’s travel budget, but protect taxpayers by limiting the number of other administration staffers that go on junkets. He should be forced to cut in half the number of political advisors, speechwriters, and flunkies that have turned White House trips into costly boondoggles. It’s not ideal to have congressional spending bills micromanage White House operations, but that might become necessary if presidents don’t exercise good judgment on personal and business trips.
None of these suggestions should be interpreted as attacks on Trump. They would be permanent reforms to address the systemic problem of wasteful spending and administrative bloat in Washington. This problem existed before the current president. And in the absence of reform, it will be an issue with future administrations.
Daniel J. Mitchell is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.
