Kyrsten Sinema Riding On A Private Jet Plane And You Paid For It!
She ain’t Taylor Swift!
Sen. Krysten Sinema of the Sinema Party likes to live large. It’s the best way for her to look down at the constituents she’s ignoring. She’s spent $20,000 in campaign dollars on “wine-related expenses.” She’s blown $10,000 at posh restaurants with names that sound like Le Top Drawer. She’s burned through at least $45,000 on chauffeurs since 2019, and she paid a luxury car service $4,000 for a single day in New York City. That all sounds exhausting, so she’s dropped $22,891 on $1,000-a-night rooms at five-star hotels.
It was also known that Sinema didn’t fly commercial if she could help it … and baby could she help it. She’s spent $70,000 over the past four years on private jet travel. It was understood that her donors paid for all this high-born living, and in turn she looked out for her donors. That’s bidness. (Sinema is probably someone who says “bidness.”)
However, the Daily Beast reports that “since 2020, Sinema has spent roughly $210,000 of her U.S. Senate office budget on private charter flights for herself and her staff.” The U.S. Senate office budget comes from us, the American taxpayer, whom Sinema apparently considers suckers.
Lawmakers rarely if ever waste taxpayer money this way. For instance, Sinema’s fellow senator from Arizona, Mark Kelly, spends zero dollars on private jets because he’s an actual public servant. Senators don’t have unlimited operations budgets, so it would seem odd that Sinema would prioritize chartered air travel over more essential matters … well, unless you knew her.
The Arizona senator has booked at least 11 private plane trips since 2020, with five of them coming in 2023, when she spent $116,000 on chartered air travel. According to the reports, nearly all of the flights were charted for travel within Arizona, as the senator and several of her staffers hit several cities and towns around the state on one- or two-day trips.
By comparison, Sinema’s home-state colleague, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), appears to have never used his Senate budget for privately chartered flights, even though he regularly travels to the same places in the state that Sinema does.
Sinema’s even flown private from Washington DC to Arizona. It’s an arduous, Oregon trail-style journey that takes all of four hours — so many people have died of cholera along the way — but nonetheless, most Congress members usually fly commercial.
Last August, Sinema took herself and four staffers on a private jet from Washington to the Grand Canyon. It cost $50,250. Don’t worry. There was a legitimate professional reason for the trip. Sinema attended a ceremony where President Joe Biden signed new laws protecting the national park.
There is no rule against senators wasting our money this way. However, her annual budget authorization is $4.3 million and that’s supposed to cover staff salaries, all travel expenses, and her pens and pencils. She spent more on private air travel last year than what most of her staffers make a year. If she flew commercial once in a while, she might have some money left to hire more staff for work that directly benefits her constituents.
What’s shocking is how much Sinema’s upped her private jet game since ditching the Democratic Party at the end of 2022. Her approval ratings are abysmal, and she hasn’t yet confirmed whether she plans to run for a second term. This almost sounds like she’s just “gonna bust the joint out and light a match.”
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"Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), appears to have never used his Senate budget for privately chartered flights"
BITCH, I'M AN ASTRONAUT.