Posted on 05/26/2015 8:00:34 AM PDT by Kaslin
THE AVARICE of Bill and Hillary Clinton is a wonder to behold. They crave wealth, it seems, even more than they crave power, and display no qualms about exploiting their political stature to amass it. According to a required financial disclosure filing last week, the former president and his wife have collected more than $30 million since January 2014, most of it from speaking engagements for which they charged an average of $240,000 each. To put that figure in perspective, what the Clintons earn per speech is nearly five times what the median US household earns per year.
Since leaving the White House in 2001, the Clintons have made more than $125 million just from what The New York Times has called "the family speechmaking business." Huge book advances have been worth many millions more. For all their poor-mouthing about being "dead broke" and needing to "pay our bills," the Clintons' income puts them well within the top one-tenth of 1 percent of all Americans.
So why, pray, should taxpayers be giving Bill Clinton an allowance that amounts to another million dollars a year?
Indeed, considering that every living past president is a multimillionaire, why should taxpayers have to fund an allowance for any of them?
That question has been on the minds of US Representatives Jason Chaffetz of Utah and Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the chairman and ranking Democrat, respectively, of the House Oversight Committee. Under a bill they have introduced, presidential pensions would be capped at $200,000 yearly, as would the amount available for office space, travel, and staff. For any former president making more than $400,000 a year, the expense account (though not the pension) would be reduced dollar-for-dollar, zeroing out once an ex-president's earnings surpassed $600,000. That's about two-and-a-half speeches, at Bill Clinton's usual rate.
On Tuesday, the committee voted in favor of the measure, sending it to the House floor. Now House members ought to do the right thing and advance it, with bipartisan approval, to the Senate.
For most of American history, presidents weren't showered with taxpayers' money after leaving office. Nor were most former presidents willing to cash in on their White House service by chasing paid speaking gigs or lucrative board memberships. Calvin Coolidge spurned offers to endorse commercial products. The money was being dangled "to hire not Calvin Coolidge, but a former president of the United States," he said, and it would be shabby to "make that kind of use of the office."
It wasn't until 1958 that Congress, learning of Harry Truman's financial struggles, enacted the Former Presidents Act to provide a pension and expense account for retired presidents. Its purpose, the Congressional Research Serviceexplained in a 2014 report, was "to maintain the dignity" of the presidency, and ensure that no ex-president would be forced to engage in activities "which would demean the office he has held or capitalize upon it in any way deemed improper." In that more innocent era, members of Congress took it for granted that former presidents would be loath to devote their post-White House years to hustling six- and seven-figure honoraria, or peddling their availability toinfluence-seeking special interests.
Well, those days are gone, and they vanished long before the Clintons were on the scene.
Gerald Ford devoted his after-presidency to aggressive moneymaking, accepting the kind of corporate directorships and consultant contracts that earlier presidents avoided on principle. "I have to earn a living," he offered as a justification. Ronald Reagan cashed a $2 million check from a Japanese media conglomerate in exchange for giving a couple speeches and attending a dinner.
George H. W. Bush took the money-grubbing to new heights: Within four years of leaving the White House, reported The Wall Street Journal in 1997, he had "earned millions of dollars speaking publicly for about 40 companies." His son has followed suit, amassing a fortune of his own in speaking fees and royalties.
Bill and Hillary Clinton didn't start the fire of post-presidential buckraking. What makes their greed distinctive is the way they have pushed it to previously unimagined levels, leveraging Hillary's political career to advance their financial interests, and vice versa.
It's crass and unseemly; it would have appalled Coolidge and Truman. But if former presidents are hell-bent on turning the prestige of the presidency into a license to print money, there's little the rest of us can do to stop them. Electing leaders with better character would help. In the meantime, taxpayers shouldn't have to treat fabulously wealthy ex-presidents to even more wealth. The Clintons and Bushes won't go hungry if they have to cover their own office rent and retirement expenses. After all, they're not royalty. Even if they are richer than 99.9 percent of their fellow citizens.
Progressivism pays very well.
Any post-political office pension should be 100% means tested—with both income and asset caps.
And, really, since most constituents don’t have such pensions, isn’t inappropriate for elected or bureaucratic officials on any level to have them as well?
If an at-risk 401k is good enough for us, it is good enough for them.
“... Harry Truman’s financial struggles,...”
Oh BOO HOO!!
If the man wasn’t smart enough to SAVE any of the money he EARNED as President all those years, he certainly could have gotten a decent JOB to support hisself.
Cry me a RIVER, please.
Who are the asstards that hire the Clintoon criminal grifters for speeches anyway? Are there companies out there that are actually able to survive being run by such far leftist loons who would hire criminal grifters such as this? How does that work? Everything the Clintoon criminal grifters say is absolute pure garbage, so how does that help these companies survive in the real world? This is like hiring Sante and Kenneth Kimes to speak at your company, what could POSSIBLY be advantageous about that? Or are they giving lessons on how to scam the public? Is that it?
Hear, Hear! Let them go back to being ordinary citizens. Lose the Secret Service for life also.
The income test is cute, but it simply is putting Fabreeze over the sewer stench of embezzlement.
Do away with political pensions. There is no justification whatsoever for elected politicians to ride on the backs of their constituents for the remainder of their lives. None.
Do some research on the history of Presidential and Congressional pensions and see how far we have fallen.
if the Clintons were not in a quid pro quo speech scam, no one would want to hear anything they have to say, let alone pay them a dime for their lies
But... but... the Clintons “care” for the middle class and will “topple” the eeeveel 1%.
Good point-—they should give up their taxpayer funded salary for life and in return they can their federal taxes waived on their income investments.
They won’t lead by example however. The bigger morons and dupes are the ones who pay them such bloated fees for speaking.
George H. W. Bush took the money-grubbing to new heights: Within four years of leaving the White House, reported The Wall Street Journal in 1997, he had "earned millions of dollars speaking publicly for about 40 companies." His son has followed suit, amassing a fortune of his own in speaking fees and royalties.
So does conservatism.
All politicians should pay their own way after leaving office then maybe some wouldn’t stay so long to get the after office perks. And they should contribute towards any pensions, and help pay for their health insurance while in office.
We will be discussing the Clintons and more on a radio program tonight:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3293557/posts
Feel free to call in with questions and comments!
The speeches are simply a way to funnel money to the Clintons, to buy influence with others that are in power.
Or better yet, get absolutely nothing. Their party can pay for the moving expense out of the White House as well as security. They certainly aren't short on funds if they can come up with billions to promote Romney and Hillary. At what point do we return politicians to a status of equal citizens? I can't imagine that day ever happening so long as they walk away with a lifetime umbilical cord to the public treasury.
An allotment should be made for security as it is directly related to the job they held. I don’t are if they earn their own money or not or if I agree with them. There is a security requirement needed to protect them from domestic and foreign crazies specifically because of their time serving the country as President. It should be limited to home protection and basic travel protection. If the Obama’s jetset as they have in office, they should get the same amount as George Bush who spends most of his time at home in Dallas. As far as annual income, I don’t know....if congress gets one, why wouldn’t the President? We know damn well the congress isn’t going to vote theirs away, and it is much more expensive than a few living presidents.
On January 10, 2013, President Barack Obama signed legislation reinstating lifetime Secret Service protection for himself, George W. Bush, and all subsequent presidents.
Richard Nixon relinquished his Secret Service protection in 1985, the only president to do so.
Secret service protection is probably unavoidable considering all the whack-jobs loose in this country. That's a public cost we must pay for allowing them to run loose.
All of us know that social security will be means tested before long. It would be best to start with defined public employee pensions first.
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