AP IMPACT: Obama's travels carry a touch of blue

Oct 13, 6:46 AM (ET)

By PHILIP ELLIOTT

PITTSBURGH (AP) - For President Barack Obama, it's almost as if the election campaign never ended. Just look at his travel schedule.

The same states that Obama targeted to win the White House are seeing an awful lot of the president, Vice President Joe Biden and top Cabinet officials. Only this year, the taxpayers are footing the multimillion-dollar tab for the trips, and Obama officials are delivering wheelbarrows of economic stimulus money - also compliments of taxpayers.

An Associated Press review of administration travel records shows that three of every four official trips Obama and his key lieutenants made in his first seven months in office were to the 28 states Obama won. Add trips to Missouri and Montana - both of which Obama narrowly lost - and almost 80 percent of the administration's official domestic travel has been concentrated in states likely to be key to Obama's re-election effort in 2012.