News organizations that covered President Barack Obama’s trip to Asia last month have had a second sticker shock.
They didn’t want to see the projected $60,000-per-organization bill, and didn’t.
The true cost turned out to be a $90,000.
President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping during a press conference in Beijing, Nov. 12, 2014 (Feng Li/Getty Images)
Obama was in China in November for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, then visited Myanmar and later went on to Australia.
“The cost of this trip is clearly astronomical,” Christi Parsons, president of the White House Correspondents Association, told TheBlaze. Parsons covers the White House for the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. “We're trying to figure out how that happened and how we can make it better in the future.”
The New York Times called it “far and away the most expensive presidential trip for the White House press corps in American history.”
The reason for the cost was that fewer journalists traveled on the press charter plane than the White House travel office anticipated.
The travel office gave reporters several initial price estimates before the trip, which depended on how many were traveling. Some estimates were above and below $60,000. Ultimately, the charter plane did not have even the lowest projected number of travelers, the Times reported.
