Washington ( CNN ) -- During President Barack Obama 's three-day swing through the states of Washington California and Colorado , he fielded questions at a town hall meeting in Silicon Valley and visited a high school in Denver . Two official events to promote his jobs plan . Compare that to seven fundraisers he headlined , raising at least $ 8 million for his re-election campaign and the Democratic National Committee . Who paid for the trip ? You did . And so did we . Taxpayers are footing the bill for almost the entire trip , which also cost millions of dollars . It 's standard practice for presidents , both Democratic and Republican , to go on predominantly fundraising trips with taxpayer 's paying for most of the travel costs . It 's completely legal . Do some official White House business on the trip and -- voila ! -- the president 's re-election campaign and party shoulder very little of the cost . `` Usually , a political party only covers a fraction of the costs of presidential travel , usually in the single digit percentages , '' says Pete Sepp with the National Taxpayers Union , a nonpartisan nonprofit group against wasteful government spending . `` Most of the money raised really comes at a free cost to the parties . They only reimburse for a few hundred thousand dollars , on a given trip , if tax payers are lucky . '' The price tag on presidential travel is exorbitant . Air Force One costs $ 181,757 per flight hour to operate , according to the Air Force . There 's a C-17 military support plane to fly the president 's limousines to his destination , perhaps another if Marine One will be used during the trip . And the personnel : the salary costs of a Secret Service detail and dozens of White House staffers who also required meals , transportation and hotel rooms . There are also local security costs like overtime pay for police officers who escort the presidential motorcade or provide security along the travel route . There is little transparency in determining the cost of presidential travel . A White House spokesman declined to say how the White House and the DNC divided the cost of Obama 's western trip , citing security concerns . Other administrations have declined to comment on the same grounds . A report conducted by the Democratic-controlled House Oversight and Government Reform Committee while President George Bush was in the White House concluded taxpayers paid for about 97 % of presidential travel , the Republican Party just 3 % . Sepp says there 's no reason to believe the breakdown is much different with the Obama administration or other White Houses . `` Ever since Ronald Reagan 's administration , presidential travel has carried with it a lot of controversy over cost as well as politics , '' Sepp says . `` Even Richard Nixon was cited for having traveled a great deal abroad , when he was having domestic political troubles . '' In 1995 , President Bill Clinton attended eight fundraisers in four days on a cross-country swing . Taxpayers often pay for travel to campaign events that rally support rather than raise money , like Bush 's dramatic entrance into a baseball stadium in Fort Myers Florida less than a month before his re-election in 2004 . Call it a perk of the presidency , something a mere candidate does not enjoy . `` And that 's the point when the parties themselves have to pay for the cost of the pomp and the circumstance , '' Sepp says . `` The pomp and the circumstance gets a lot smaller , a lot more modest . ''
It 's standard practice for presidents , both Democratic and Republican . There is little difference in determining the cost of presidential travel . Presidents also pay for travel to political events that they support rather than spending money .