President Obama logged more hours on the golf course and on vacation than he did in meetings on the economy, a new report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Institute found.
The “Presidential Calendar: A Time-Based Analysis” used official White House calendar entries through March 2013 to compute how Mr. Obama has spent his time in office, Breitbart reported. And the GAI findings on the president’s leisure may have been underestimated.
Mr. Obama said in a previous interview on CBS that each golf outing lasted six hours. The report authors only estimated four hours per round, Breitbart reported.
“We really went out of our way to fairly and accurately reflect how the president spends his time,” said GAI President Peter Schweizer on Breitbart.
GAI researchers also fell on Mr. Obama’s side when it came time to estimate his meetings on economic-related matters, allowing for anything on the calendar that even remotely seemed related, Breitbart reported. For example, “meets with Cabinet secretaries” was considered economic gatherings.
“People understand that presidents have the most stressful job in the world and need a break from time to time,” Mr. Schweizer said on Breitbart. “There will be some who will be encouraged by the numbers and some who will wish the president spent more time in economic meetings. … We just tabulate the numbers.”
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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