On Monday, the White House hosted its annual Easter Egg Hunt. (Click here for full coverage of that story.) Many officials in attendance were reportedly curious why Vice President Dick Cheney was not present. It turns out the VP was in Washington…State, having ostensibly been dispatched there on Air Force Two (a.k.a. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) by the President to attend to matters of great national importance. However, a reliable imaginary source within the West Wing (not Martin Sheen) is suggesting a different scenario entirely. Reportedly, when Cheney was initially told that there would be a Hunt at the White House, he let out a war whoop and then ran to his office to get his shotgun. Before he got there, though, he was intercepted by Press Secretary Scott McClellan, who brusquely informed the VP that there was not going to be any shooting at the White House this week and that the President’s tenuous approval ratings would not likely withstand such a public relations nightmare. Chastened, Cheney went to his office to sulk. In the interest of public safety, he was shortly thereafter sent to the Pacific Northwest to stump for the Grand Old Party. But the story does not end there. When new White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten caught wind of what had happened (Cheney having tattled), he reportedly took exception to McClellan’s handling of the affair and demanded his resignation, which was promptly tendered. And so the smooth operation of the White House continues…

Fictional scenarios aside, Dick Cheney was in Washington State on Monday and was stumping for GOP candidates there—all at significant taxpayer expense, as reported by Joel Connelly, a columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Cheney’s visit? Just put it on our tab

When Vice President Dick Cheney shuttled across the state Monday on Air Force Two, raising as much as $500,000 for the Republican Party and its candidates, taxpayers footed most of the bill. The campaigns of GOP Senate candidate Mike McGavick and House hopeful Doug Roulstone will reimburse only a tiny fraction of what it cost to fly Cheney to Washington, drive him around in motorcades, put him up for the night, pay the salaries of traveling staff and provide Secret Service protection.

Subsidized campaign junkets by the president and vice president are likely to add up quickly in this year’s crucial battle for Congress. “Assuming that the president and vice president engage in political travel in 2006 comparable to their political travel in 2002, the projected cost to the taxpayer of their political flights in 2006 is $7.2 million,” said a report last month by minority staff of the House Committee on Government Reform. “Adjusting this figure to account for estimated reimbursements, the projected net cost to the taxpayer in 2006 is $7 million,” the report added.

The Cheney trip this week is a textbook case of how to charge the public purse for a political trip. An oft-used gambit is a brief “official” stopover at a military base between fund-raisers. The troops may have been sent to Iraq without adequate protective gear and armor, but Cheney and President Bush have not hesitated to deploy soldiers, sailors and airmen as stage props. Cheney spoke for 17 minutes Monday afternoon to about 500 service members at Fairchild Air Force Base outside Spokane. The stop at Fairchild allowed Cheney to save Republicans thousands of dollars they would have to reimburse the government if the political event had been the only item on his Lilac City itinerary.

Bush used a similar gambit in 2004 when he came to Spokane to boost the Senate campaign of then-Rep. George Nethercutt. He included an official event in the form of a speech on “new threats to the nation’s security” at Fort Lewis. The real business lies elsewhere. Bush spoke to a $1,000-a-plate dinner for Nethercutt.

Cheney’s real destination in Spokane was the Marie Antoinette Room of the Hotel Davenport. A $500-a-person reception for McGavick drew about 200 people. Rich Republicans paid $2,100 apiece to get their pictures taken backstage with Cheney, in Spokane and at his earlier Everett stop. A chosen few participated in a small “round-table discussion” with Cheney.

Travel by the president and vice president does not come cheaply. Flight operating costs total $56,518 an hour on Air Force One and $14,552 an hour on Air Force Two, according to last month’s House report. The figures are based on per-hour costs listed by the General Accounting Office for 2000, and adjusted for inflation.

Bush and Cheney have hit the road to secure and hold on to Republican control of the House and Senate. During the last off-year election, in 2002, Bush went on at least 46 trips to 82 destinations to do political fund raising and rallies. Air Force One covered 45,000 miles on these trips at an estimated flight cost of $4.1 million. The estimated cost of accompanying cargo planes came to $615,000. Cheney took at least 37 trips to 86 destinations on 2002 political missions. He covered more than 66,000 miles at an estimated flight cost of $1.8 million.

What did the political beneficiaries pay? “The total estimated reimbursement recovered by the federal government for presidential and vice presidential political flights in 2002 was $198,000, and the total net cost to the taxpayer was $6.3 million,” the House report said. “The taxpayer thus paid an estimated 97 percent of the flight expenses.” more…

Perhaps we would have been better off if the Vice President had stayed at home and gone hunting instead. I guess the yolk’s on us.