Pelosi Jet Goes Up For Sale

Pelosi's C-32 Luxury Jet

Washington DC, Jan 8, 2011. Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-OH, announced today that Nancy Pelosi;s C-32 jet will shortly be put up for sale on eBay, a popular auction website.

"We just don't need anything that big and lavish anymore" Speaker Boehner told us. "We have to put a stop to all this free spending, and it will start right here."

When Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, became speaker of the House in 2007, she insisted that the 12 seat C-20 she inherited "just wasn't big enough for her needs." She said she needed a much larger C-32 that seats 50 and can fly nonstop to her home in San Francisco.

The C-32 is based on a Boeing 757-200 jumbo jet designed to carry 200 passengers.  But due to the addition of a lavish bedroom suite, several conference rooms, a complete bar, a formal dining room, and several other luxury amenities it can only hold 50 passengers.

The Boeing 757-200 jet costs around $80 million to purchase, before the modifications specified by Ms. Pelosi were made.

The Formal Dining Room

Pelosi's jet costs $22,000 per hour to operate.

During her tenure in office it cost the U.S. taxpayers around $480,000 per month to fly her back and forth to her home in California each weekend.

Tickets on commercial jets would have cost around $2,000 per month instead.

In fact, one of her predecessors, Newt Gingrich, R-GA, flew exclusively on commercial jets to save the taxpayers this expense. And he flew coach.

By switching back to a smaller jet, like the C-20 that her predecessor Dennis Hassert, R-IL, used Boehner believes he can save the taxpayers quite a bit of money.

"We will probably take a real beating on the plane itself," Boehner said, "but we should do pretty well on the fixtures if we sell them separately."

Speaker Pelosi had her plane outfitted with solid gold bathroom fixtures, Picasso paintings, very expensive silk sheets, and she kept the bar well stocked with only the most expensive liquors and cordials.

It turns out that Pelosi had inadvertently made a very good investment for taxpayers. Those solid gold fixtures were purchased when gold was only $800 per ounce, and will probably fetch well over $1300 per ounce today.

Real estate mogul Donald Trump has expressed interest in buying former Speaker Pelosi's jet, but says "but not unless she absorbs the eBay and  Paypal fees and provides free shipping."