“If you want to leave all the lights on in your house, you can. There’s no law against it. But you will pay for it,” Vice President Dick Cheney told consumers several weeks ago. Pay for it indeed, unless of course, you’re the Vice President.
Cheney has requested that the electricity bills for his Washington, D.C. home—the Vice President’s mansion—be paid by the U.S. Navy. After all, Cheney’s reasoning goes, the house belongs to the Navy and he’s just a tenant; his budget shouldn’t be burdened by something as mundane as a power bill. Meanwhile, Cheney remains a central player in determining the country’s energy policy. Except there really isn’t one. Electricity costs have risen sharply across the country, and the Bush administration—with Cheney in the lead role—has done absolutely nothing for consumers. Now he’s feeling the pinch and wants to off-load the electricity bill.
The house—all 33 rooms of it—is on the grounds of the Washington Navel Observatory.
But here’s the part I don’t understand: The estimated bill for the year for the Cheney residence is a whopping US$186,000 (almost doubled since 1999’s bill of US$83,800). The combined gas and electric bills for my home—admittedly smaller at 8 rooms plus a garage—run between US$1,200 - US$1,500 per year (mostly depending on how cold winter is). My wife and I both work from home, however, so that figure includes 2 offices with at least 2 computers and a server running 24 hours a day. That works out to roughly US$187.50 per room per year for our home. Rounding that figure up to, say, US$200 per room—oh, hell let’s double that to US$400 per room (I’m sure the Cheney’s rooms are much larger and better lit than the Fraase’s and the Cheney’s probably leave the lights on)—and it comes to a grand total of US$13,200. I see no reason why Cheney’s home electricity bills should be more than US$15,000 per year, or 10 times what my bills average.
So, how do you account for the US$172,800 discrepancy? How do you use almost US$173,000 in electricity in a year? Power tools?
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