Senator Paul, Scourge of Government Waste, Bills Taxpayers Six Figures for Private Charter Flights

WASHINGTON — Senator Paul, who has built a career decrying wasteful government spending down to the penny, ranks routinely among the Senate's biggest spenders of taxpayer money on private charter flights, an investigation into congressional travel found, billing well into six figures to be conveyed around the state by aircraft the chamber's own rules pointedly discourage.

The flights, records show, ferried the senator between public appearances and press conferences, several of them events at which the senator discussed the urgent need to protect the public purse. The Press notes the aesthetic difficulty of denouncing a bloated federal government from the cabin of a jet the federal government is renting for you, though it concedes the senator has never once been slowed by an aesthetic difficulty.

Supporters explained that the flights were an efficient use of a busy senator's time. Critics called them a monument to hypocrisy with wings. The Press's waste desk observes that 'a responsible steward of taxpayer dollars' and 'a swamp creature living large at your expense' are the same charter invoice, filed under whichever party is reading it.

Fiscal watchdogs, normally the senator's most cited allies, noted that private charter is roughly ten times the cost of a commercial ticket and the single most carbon-intensive way a human being can be moved from one town-hall to the next about restraint.

Asked whether the flights conflicted with his crusade against waste, the senator said he was focused on the taxpayer, whom he thanked, from the tarmac, for the ride.