Nancy Pelosi’s Airplanes

YOU WILL NEVER SEE THIS IN ANY NEWSPAPERS IN THE COUNTRY! THEY HAVE NO GUTS - THEY WOULD RATHER SEE PEOPLE STARVING THAN REPORT ON THE MONSTER THAT IS NANCY PELOSI!

The above is a line in an angry e-mail that’s been circulating. The author claims:

Madame Pelosi wasn't happy with the small private jet that comes with the Speaker's job...no, Madame Pelosi was aggravated that this little jet had to stop to refuel, so she ordered a Big Fat 200 seat jet that could get her back to California without stopping! Many, many legislators walked by and grinned with glee as Joe informed everyone what Nancy's Big Fat Jet costs us, the hard working American Taxpayers, for the thousands of gallons of fuel every week.

The email is mostly wrong.

Since the September 11 attack, military jets have given all Speakers of the House direct flights back and forth to their districts. According to the House Sergeant at Arms:

The Speaker requires additional precautions due to her responsibilities as the leader of the House and her Constitutional position as second in the line of succession to the presidency.

In a post 9/11 threat environment, it is reasonable and prudent to provide military aircraft to the Speaker for official travel between Washington and her district... The fact that Speaker Pelosi lives in California compelled me to request an aircraft that is capable of making non-stop flights for security purposes, unless such an aircraft is unavailable.

Based on the planes' hourly costs of operation, as given by Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense John Murtha, Pelosi's 44 flights to her district during 2007 and 2008 cost more than $1 million.

And that doesn't count the flights she cancelled, sometimes with less than an hour of notice. Judicial Watch used a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain correspondence from a military officer writing about one of Pelosi's cancellations:

There is a hidden cost... We have mx folks prepping the jets and crews driving in (not a short drive for some), cooking meals and preflighting the jets etc. If the members and staff still don't know until an hour before takeoff then OK. However, if the group can decide a couple hours before then we might be able to save the units and aircrew some money and effort.

In response to a list of flight requests by Pelosi's staff, another officer noted that her office often reserved flights and then cancelled them.

[The Speaker's Office has] a history of canceling many of their past requests. Any chance of politely querying them if they really intend to do all of these or are they just picking every weekend?

Is it worth a million dollars so that Pelosi doesn't have to fly commercial? This is the conceit of the ruling class. politicians on the other side of the aisle do the same thing: Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert used military jets just as often.

Give me a break.