The Palin Per Diem Confusion

The Washington Post ran an article today that attempts to cast Sarah Palin as a money wasting governor because she charged per diem to the state when she was living at home. Unfortunately for the Post, their article contradicts itself.

The headline reads “Palin Billed State for Nights Spent at Home” From simply reading the headline it would appear that Palin stayed in her own home, and charged the state a per diem rate for simply staying in her home. Only she didn’t.

You can take a look at the travel authorization forms posted on the Posts site, clearly Palin wrote “Lodging – own home” to indicate why she didn’t charge a lodging per diem. Hence why on the forms there are no charges listed under “lodging.”

Let’s just go through the post’s story point-by-point to show how it is aimed at getting people to believe something based purely on the headline and the first few paragraphs, and not the whole story.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has billed taxpayers for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office, charging a “per diem” allowance intended to cover meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business.

The first paragraph fails to mention that the per diem charges are legal and, in fact, quite in line with her predecessors.

The governor also has charged the state for travel expenses to take her children on official out-of-town missions. And her husband, Todd, has billed the state for expenses and a daily allowance for trips he makes on official business for his wife.

This is the second paragraph, it is a complete misrepresentation of the truth, which the Post conveniently pushes to later on in the story. The fact is the children were given per diem because they accompanied their mother on official business. They accompanied her because they were asked to attend. For example, the first family of Alaska is expected to attend community events all over the state. That means the entire family, not just Palin, is on official business.

Palin, who earns $125,000 a year, claimed and received $16,951 as her allowance, which officials say was permitted because her official “duty station” is Juneau

In the third paragraph the Post finally gets around to telling the reader that all this is permitted and by no means did Palin take a per diem unlawfully. So is this really a story?

Gubernatorial spokeswoman Sharon Leighow said Monday that Palin’s expenses are not unusual and that, under state policy, the first family could have claimed per diem expenses for each child taken on official business but has not done so.

Ah ha, so we start to see the truth. The state actually allowed Palin to claim a much more sweeping per diem that would have claimed expenses for each child taken on official business, but Palin didn’t.

We also can’t forget that when Palin took office she fired the family chef, sold the governors jet for millions, and drives herself to work. Palin’s record as a slasher of unnecessary spending is hard to argue.

The Post continues to elaborate on their non-story, and then they hit on an interesting statistic that was buried in the last paragraph on the second page (of the online version).

Gov. Palin has spent far less on her personal travel than her predecessor: $93,000 on airfare in 2007, compared with $463,000 spent the year before by her predecessor, Frank Murkowski.

Hmmm, why would the Post bury the fact that Palin cut travel expenses by 80% over her predecessor. I mean, that’s a fairly large component to the story. Well it’s simple, it doesn’t fit the narrative. They’re trying to cast Palin as a liar and over spender, when in fact she not only cut spending by getting rid of planes and unneeded workers, but she also cut spending through personal per diem.

Oh but it gets better.

The Post decries Palin for charging the state for her daughters travel expenses, and points out that Todd Palin charged for travel expenses between their house and Juneau, but Murkowski’s wife was no better.

Leighow said that the governor’s staff has tallied the travel expenses charged by Murkowski’s wife: $35,675 in 2006, $43,659 in 2005, $13,607 in 2004 and $29,608 in 2003

And finally let’s add up how much Palin charged in per diem. It was $16,951, across 312 days comes out to $54.33 per day, the per diem is $60.

Every time the main stream media pushes these non-story stories, McCain-Palin gain a point in the polls. The Washington Post may not believe it but the American people aren’t dumb, they aren’t simply going to read the headline and then the first paragraph and think Palin is a chronic over spender, they’ll read on and see that this story, isn’t really a story.

–jb