One has to seriously question Vance’s political instincts if he is okay with the optics of using taxpayer resources for a family vacation on public lands, while the National Parks Service struggles to provide average Americans with service thanks to budget cuts from co-President Elon Musk’s destructive Department of Government Efficiency.
"It's outrageous for the Army corps of engineers to spend taxpayer money to increase water flow in a river so @VP can go canoeing when budget cuts to the National Park Service have severely impacted family vacations for everyone else," ethics lawyer Richard Painter wrote in a post on X. Norm Eisen, who served as White House special counsel for ethics and government reform under former President Barack Obama, said he never would have approved this kind of trip.
“While there may well be security-related explanations or justifications that come into the analysis, my reaction is: I don’t care. We shouldn’t be utilising government resources in this way. I never would have allowed it,” Eisen told the Guardian.
Democrats, meanwhile, slammed Vance for using Army Corps of Engineers resources for his personal gain.
"In NJ, we’re waiting for Army Corp of Engineers to address ongoing, catastrophic flooding of the Rahway River towns. Maybe after Vance family vacation," Kathleen Miller Prunty, the commissioner of public safety in Cranford, New Jersey, wrote in a post on X. |
