Washington Post political reporter John Wagner (6/19/16) reported on Bernie Sanders’ continuing Secret Service detail, [using] an eight-year-old stat to provide urgency to his general thesis that Sanders’ quixotic campaign is draining us, the good American “taxpayer,” of resources:
Such round-the-clock protection can cost taxpayers more than $38,000 a day.
Over the next 48 hours, this tidbit quickly spread across several outlets, providing a good clickbait-friendly fable of Sanders’ egoism run expensively amok.
[...]
The cynicism of the talking point reached a depressing low with this tweet from Clinton surrogate and actress Debra Messing:
Wudnt it be amazing if Sanders asked that the $38,000 a day was donated to Orlando families?
https://t.co/dGrq4BpeQV
— Debra Messing (@DebraMessing) June 19, 2016
How does Messing propose that the Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security, given Sanders’ authorization to stop protecting him, turn the resulting savings into cash for the purposes of “donating to Orlando families”? [...] Even without the exploitation of the Orlando attack, it’s a talking point that doesn’t make any sense.
[...]
The [dollar figure] the Post reported was frequently used by then–Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan in 2008.
The Secret Service is spending about $38,000 per candidate per day, Sullivan said, and at the height of campaign season later this year expects to spend $44,000 per candidate each day.
[...]
Sullivan isn’t saying the Secret Service is spending $38,000 per candidate in addition to what they would spend anyway. He’s only saying it’s what they spent per candidate. This, one can assume, includes fixed costs, like labor and infrastructure. Clearly, protecting Sanders also has other costs above fixed ones—like overtime, per diems, travel—but without any context or knowledge of what the $38,000 is in reference to, it’s a totally useless number.
[...]
When FAIR reached out to the Secret Service for comment on the $38,000 figure, a spokesperson told us, just as they told the Post, that they “do not comment on the details of protection.”
[...]
Does anyone think the Secret Service is going to fire the exact number of agents assigned to Sanders the day he drops out? Does anyone think the additional vehicles and equipment needed will quickly be pawned off and the money transferred over to Johnny Taxpayer? Does anyone repeating this talking point think that if the Sanders campaign had ended one week ago the US federal government would somehow be $166,000 richer?
Adam Johnson @ FAIR.org
Oh, Adam, I imagine there are thousands upon thousands of people who believe that now that they've been told so by the press.
[A]nyone with a passing understanding of how federal budgets work knows that budgets are based on approximates, not line items picked on an as-needed basis. So, even if the claim is true as such—even if the $38,000 is in reference to monies needed beyond the Secret Service’s normal course of operation—it still doesn’t make any sense. Until the Secret Services asks Congress for additional funds, there is no money being added or taken from their actual budget, and thus no money being added or taken away from “the taxpayer.”
Oh, Adam, there are millions of Americans who don't have a passing understanding of how the federal budget works.
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