Are there transparency reports or audits comparing presidents' travel spending historically?

1. A fractured accountability ecosystem, not a single scorecard

Congressional and executive‑branch audits exist but are uneven: the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued targeted reports estimating costs for particular presidential trips and has authority to verify certificated expenditures, but GAO work typically examines specific trips or programmatic controls rather than producing a historical, cross‑president cost series ^{[1] [2]}.

2. What GAO does — and what it does not do — matters

GAO reports have produced multi‑million‑dollar estimates for particular trips (for example, a GAO audit estimated ~$13.6 million on average for four audited Mar‑a‑Lago trips in a 2019 analysis cited in reporting) and GAO also verified FY2022 certificated expenditures of the President in another review, but GAO notes its figures often exclude classified costs and personnel salary/benefits that are budgeted irrespective of travel; GAO’s mandates therefore leave gaps for a full historical comparison ^{[4] [1] [2]}.

3. Watchdogs and think tanks build comparative tallies — with different methods

Groups like the National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTUF) and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) track presidential travel over time and produce cross‑administration snapshots and cost estimates; NTUF maintains an “International Presidential Travel Cost Studies Archive” and has argued transparency is limited since the last comprehensive GAO overseas‑trip accounting was in 1999, while CREW has public tallies of protected trips and visits ^{[5] [6] [7]}.

4. Media and advocacy estimates can diverge because of methodology

News outlets and advocacy groups report large, sometimes inconsistent totals for presidents’ travel because some estimates include operating hours for Air Force One, Secret Service overtime, local protection costs, State Department support, and venue spending — while others exclude classified or baseline personnel salary costs. Political‑leaning organizations and media pieces have produced widely different headline numbers for the same president’s travel depending on which line items they include ^{[4] [8] [9]}.

5. Public data sources exist but require forensic assembly

Federal spending data (e.g., Treasury Fiscal Data and the Monthly Treasury Statement) are public and can be mined to approximate travel‑related outlays, but these datasets are not labeled as “presidential travel” line items and require cross‑matching with agency reports (DHS/Secret Service, DOD airlift, State Department) and FOIA releases to assemble a near‑complete picture ^{[3] [10] [11]}.

6. Important historical limits: the last comparative GAO glimpse was decades ago

Reporting and the NTU Foundation note that the last time GAO produced a broadly transparent accounting for presidential overseas travel dates to the late 1990s (Clinton-era reports on 1998 trips and related airlift analyses), meaning official historical comparability is thin and researchers often must rely on partial audits, FOIA returns, and third‑party reconstructions ^{[7] [1]}.

7. What researchers and the public typically do to compare presidents

Scholars and watchdogs combine: (a) GAO trip audits and inspector‑general letters for concrete trip costs, (b) Secret Service and DHS budget and spending requests (including protective‑travel tallies), (c) Air Force per‑flight‑hour rates for presidential aircraft, and (d) local jurisdiction expense disclosures — then note uncaptured items such as classified costs or routine personnel salaries. That patchwork approach yields useful comparisons but always carries methodological caveats ^{[1] [6] [5] [11]}.

8. Competing narratives and political context

Reporting shows competing political uses of travel cost figures: critics present large totals as examples of waste or conflicts of interest (e.g., payments to privately owned properties), while defenders highlight the diplomatic and security necessities of presidential travel and the difficulty of apples‑to‑apples comparisons when missions and safeguards differ among administrations ^{[4] [12] [9]}.

9. Practical path for someone seeking a historical comparison today

Start with GAO trip audits and IG letters for concrete cases, pull Secret Service/DHS protective travel tallies and DoD airlift expense rates, consult watchdog archives (NTUF, CREW) for compiled tables, and use Treasury Fiscal Data to corroborate agency outlays — but document what each dataset omits (classified costs, baseline salaries) so readers understand the limits of any cross‑president ranking ^{[1] [2] [5] [3]}.

Limitations and final note: available sources show audits, watchdog tallies, and public fiscal datasets exist but no single authoritative historical audit compares every president’s travel costs; any comparative figure must disclose methods and omitted categories to be meaningful ^{[1] [7] [3]}.