The Republicans are complaining that President Obama's trips this week to North Carolina and Colorado this week is a “misuse of government funds.'
Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National committee, on Wednesday sent a letter to Comptroller General Gene Dodaro asking him to review whether the president's trip to push against a rise in college loans was really designed to benefit his re-election campaign.
“Throughout his administration, but particularly in recent weeks, President Obama has been passing off campaign travel as 'official events,' thereby allowing taxpayers, rather than this campaign, to pay for his reelection efforts,” Priebus writes. “”Given the recent excesses, waste, and abuse uncovered by the General Services Administration, the GAO should be particularly sensitive to misuse of taxpayer's dollars.”
“The most recent examples of such misuse came yesterday in North Carolina and Colorado,” he wrote. “President Obama traveled to the two states at taxpayer expense to deliver speeches to cheering crowds of college students, events widely reported to be equivalent to campaign rallies.''
He noted that he was in Iowa on Wednesday. He noted that all three were battleground states.
“One might imagine that if this were genuinely a government event,” Priebus wrote, “he might have stopped in a non battleground state like Texas or Vermont.''
