The Former Presidents Act of 1958 provides several benefits and perks that are available to presidents after they leave office. The biggest personal benefit that former presidents are entitled to is an annual pension equal to the pay for a Cabinet Secretary, which is $221,400 in 2021. Widows of former Presidents are eligible for a $20,000 yearly pension. In addition former Presidents and their spouses can opt to receive lifetime Secret Service protection.
Below is an overview of the of the additional benefits for former presidents (a more detailed analysis is available in NTUF's November 2020 issue brief, Congress Should Roll Back Perks to Ex-Presidents Costing Taxpayers $4 Million Annually):
Office Space and Staffing Allowances: Starting six months after a President leaves office, the General Services Administration (GSA) provides funding to establish, furnish, and staff an official office anywhere in the U. S.
Travel Expenses: Chief Executives and up to two staff members are reimbursed for up to $1 million in costs annually. Spouses of former Presidents also are eligible for up to $500,000 per year for security and official travel.
Health Benefits: Provided that they had been enrolled in the Federal Employees Health Benefits program for at least five years, former Presidents are eligible for health annuities, similar to all federal employees. (Jimmy Carter is ineligible because he only served a single term and did not hold another federal position.)
Funerals: Presidents are guaranteed a ceremony with full honors and the option to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Secret Service Protection: Presidents are eligible for lifetime protection. The related costs are classified.
Presidents who are removed from office through the impeachment process are no longer eligible for the pension and benefits provided in the Former Presidents Act.
Lifetime Secret Service protections is provided under a separate law so this benefit would not be impacted by removal from office.
Benefits and Pensions Allowances for Former Presidents: FY 2000 - 2017 (Dollars in Thousands) | ||||
President | Total Allowances Received | # of Years Allowances Received from FY 2000-2017 | Average per Year | Share of Total Outlays |
Gerald Ford | $5,189 | 8 | $649 | 8% |
Jimmy Carter | $10,168 | 18 | $565 | 16% |
Ronald Reagan | $4,190 | 6 | $698 | 6% |
George H. | $15,172 | 18 | $843 | 23% |
William Clinton | $19,146 | 17 | $1,126 | 30% |
George W. Bush | $10,493 | 9 | $1,166 | 16% |
Barack H. Obama | $370 | 1 | $370 | 1% |
Total | $64,728 |
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FY 2017 Allowances for Former Presidents (Dollars in Thousands) | |||||
Jimmy Carter | George H. | William Clinton | George W. Bush | Barack H. Obama | |
Personnel Compensation | $0 | $96 | $96 | $96 | $29 |
Personnel Benefits | $0 | $82 | $98 | $98 | $38 |
Pension | $210 | $210 | $226 |
$220 | $161 |
Travel | $0 | $78 | $0 | $18 | $3 |
Office Space | $113 | $254 | $511 | $472 | $84 |
Communications | $21 | $50 | $1 | $140 | $11 |
Printing | $7 | $9 | $22 | $40 | $6 |
Other Services | $91 | $67 | $44 | $14 | $20 |
Supplies and Materials | $3 | $4 | $12 | $20 | $3 |
Equipment | $0 | $18 | $35 | $20 | $15 |
Total | $444 | $868 | $1,045 | $1,138 | $370 |
FY 2016 Allowances for Former Presidents (Dollars in Thousands) | ||||
Jimmy Carter | George H. | William Clinton | George W. Bush | |
Personnel Compensation | $0 | $96 | $96 | $96 |
Personnel Benefits | $0 | $65 | $119 | $90 |
Pension | $207 | $207 | $221 | $217 |
Travel | $0 | $72 | $0 | $8 |
Office Space | $112 | $205 | $444 | $440 |
Communications | $15 | $57 | $13 | $64 |
Printing | $7 | $8 | $17 | $14 |
Other Services | $94 | $73 | $26 | $43 |
Supplies and Materials | $2 | $13 | $7 | $35 |
Equipment | $0 | $22 | $26 | $40 |
Total | $437 | $818 | $969 | $1,047 |
FY 2015 Allowances for Former Presidents (Dollars in Thousands) | ||||
Jimmy Carter | George H. | William Clinton | George W. Bush | |
Personnel Compensation | $0 | $96 | $96 | $96 |
Personnel Benefits | $0 | $65 | $119 | $102 |
Pension | $205 | $205 | $218 | $214 |
Travel | $0 | $56 | $0 | $10 |
Office Space | $112 | $207 | $429 | $434 |
Communications | $15 | $60 | $11 | $80 |
Printing | $1 | $10 | $9 | $20 |
Other Services | $96 | $62 | $31 | $64 |
Supplies and Materials | $1 | $10 | $3 | $28 |
Equipment | $0 | $23 | $8 | $50 |
Total | $430 | $794 | $924 | $1,098 |
Data Sources: U.
S. General Services Administration and Congressional Research Service.
NTUF Archive
2017
2016
Pensions and Perks for Former Presidents
2013
The Perks of Being a Former President
Spending Spotlight: Benefits for Former Presidents
By Robert Morello Updated June 28, 2018
Only 44 individuals have served as president of the United States since George Washington was elected the first in 1789. Today, upon retirement, each of these leaders receives a pension from the federal government along with Secret Service protection for himself and his family and a host of other benefits.
If you think the President's perks end when leaving office, think again.
Each former president receives the same salary as a current member of the Presidential Cabinet. For 2017, the amount was $207,800 per year. This number does not take into account the extras the former leader is entitled to including payroll for office staff and free postage for life. The former president is granted a host of benefits that often add up to more than the pension payment itself. For example, ex-presidents are allowed office space and communications systems paid for by taxpayers. Fiscal year 2018 budget requests for the former presidents include $536,000 for office space for former President Barack Obama and $68,000 for travel for George H.W. Bush.
Should the former president be survived by a spouse, the spouse is granted a pension of $20,000 for life, as well as a free postage benefit.
On top of all these pension payments and benefits come the expenses involved with the personal protection of each former president and his family. In total the amount spent on a former president can reach into the millions of dollars per year. In 2015, former president Jimmy Carter accounted for over $200,000 in additional costs while expenses for George W. Bush reached $800,000. Budget requests for former President Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama in 2018 exceed $1 million each, including pension costs.
In addition to earning a pension, the former president is free to publish memoirs, join corporate boards and give speeches for payment to audiences around the world. The potential earnings for such activities is nearly without limit. Clinton went on to earn over $65 million in speaking fees alone after his presidency and another $15 million for his published memoirs.
Ex-presidents did not earn pensions until 1958 when Congress put in place the Former Presidents Act, providing the benefits today's leaders now receive.
Before this Act was passed, ex-presidents were given nothing after leaving office, and the results were evident. For example, Thomas Jefferson sold his personal library to create the basis for the Library of Congress and James Monroe was destitute when he died.
References
Writer Bio
Robert Morello has an extensive travel, marketing and business background. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University in 2002 and has worked in travel as a guide, corporate senior marketing and product manager and travel consultant/expert. Morello is a professional writer and adjunct professor of travel and tourism.
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Image copyright, EPA
Image caption,As he left the Senate, José Mujica said he wanted to spend more time on his farm that does not want to receive a senator's pension.
Mujica has served in the Uruguayan Senate since 2015. He moved to this position after his presidential term ended. Last Tuesday, he also left the post of senator.
" "Despite this, as long as my mind is still working, I cannot give up solidarity and ideological struggle," says the ex-president's letter to the head of the Senate, Lucia Topolansky, Mujica's wife, who is also the vice president of the country.
Mujica is 83 years old. He spent about 14 years in military prisons.
José Mujica, known for his direct, sometimes harsh statements, also apologized to "those colleagues whom he could personally offend in a heated argument."
In 2013, he was forced to apologize to the then President of Argentina, Cristina Kirchner, after calling her an "old witch" and her husband a "cross-eyed man." This statement got into the press by accident - during one of the press conferences, Mujica did not pay attention to the switched on microphone and did not think that he would be heard.
Image copyright, Getty Images
Image caption,Mujica's three-legged dog (pictured right) became famous with him
In 2016, he said Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was "crazy as a goat".
But Mujica is best known for his humble lifestyle. Both during his presidency and after, Mujica lived with his wife on his family farm near the country's capital, Montevideo.
Image captionMujica chose this farm as his official residence
Mujica grew flowers for sale with his wife, donated about 90% of his salary to charity, and his only property, apart from the farm, was a 1987 Volkswagen Beetle. Mujica was offered a million dollars for the car in 2014, but he refused to sell the Volkswagen, saying that he would have nothing to transport his three-legged dog on.
Muhiko's retirement did not come as a surprise - he warned that he was preparing to leave two weeks before his resignation.
However, there are rumors in Uruguayan political circles that the former president has stepped down to run again in the 2019 presidential election.
During the open meeting of the Council of the Smolninskoye MO, March 2, 2022 Photo: Nikita Yuferev
Politics Russia
Alexander Ivanova
The Council of the municipality "Smolninskoe" of St.
Petersburg called on the State Duma to remove President Putin from office for treason. How the deputies of the district where Putin grew up protest against the war in Ukraine, and what they hope for - at DW.
https://p.dw.com/p/4GaZJ
Advertising Russia Vladimir Putin from office due to treason in connection with the military actions of the Russian Federation against Ukraine.
DW talked to the author of this initiative, Dmitry Palyuga, and one of the Mundeps who supported her, Nikita Yuferev, about why they took this step and what kind of reaction they expect.
According to Nikita Yuferev, who has been a member of the council of the Smolninskoye municipality since 2019, the "thought to protest" came to him and his colleagues quite a long time ago, namely, on February 24, 2022. Together with another member of the Council of the municipality "Smolninskoye" - Dmitry Baltrukov - and deputies from various political movements from other municipalities, Yuferev applied for a rally on February 24 "under the then still permitted slogan" "No to war: for peace, for peace with Ukraine and political stability.
" However, the city authorities did not agree on the rally.
Then Yuferev and his colleagues invited all residents of St. Petersburg to an open meeting of the Council of the Smolninskoye Municipality on March 2. "A lot of people came. The police came, the riot police came. There were a lot of helmets, a lot of paddy wagons, but everything went smoothly," the Mundep recalls in an interview with DW. “We agreed on an appeal to President Putin that the special operation should be ended, and parted ways.”
The appeal was sent to the Kremlin, but the signatories did not receive a response, says Yuferev. In August, he sent another statement to the President of the Russian Federation - this time on my own behalf - with a call to end the special operation for humanitarian reasons: “After all, millions of Ukrainians became refugees, more than 5,000 civilians, according to the UN at that time, died, including about 300 children.
” This time the answer came. It said that the appeal had been considered and that Russia was conducting "a special military operation to demilitarize and denazify," Yuferev said.0005
On September 7, Yuferev's colleague for deputy work in the Council of the Moscow Region "Smolninskoe" Dmitry Palyuga submitted to the council meeting a draft appeal to the State Duma calling for the president to be removed from office due to treason.
In a conversation with DW, Palyuga himself and his colleague Nikita Yuferev emphasize that, by sending an appeal to the State Duma, they acted within the legal field and used exclusively the procedures prescribed by law. "So far, there have been no precedents for someone to be convicted for a request to a state body. In addition, Russian law expressly prohibits doing this," Palyuga points out.
According to him, the decision to prepare an appeal to the deputies of the State Duma was not spontaneous.
The very idea came to Palyuga when he began to notice that even in the so-called "patriotic" publics and Telegram channels, whose users traditionally support the government's course, statements began to appear that "the activities of the President of the Russian Federation do not meet the interests of Russia."
Palyuga and Yuferev published a copy of their appeal to the State Duma of the Russian Federation on their Twitter pages. The document says that, according to its authors, the actions of Russian President Putin contain signs of a crime, provided for by the article of the Russian Constitution on treason. Specifically, they pay attention to four points.
In particular, we are talking about the destruction of combat-ready units of the Russian army, the death and injury of young and able-bodied citizens of the Russian Federation, the damage to the Russian economy, the expansion of NATO that followed the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, as well as equipping the Ukrainian army with modern Western equipment, which itself is in itself contrary to the goal of "demilitarizing" the neighboring state.
"In fact, we do not consider the approach of NATO a direct threat to Russia, but we are trying to appeal to different audiences with different arguments in order to convince them of the need to end this business," Yuferev explains.
According to him, ten of the twenty members of the council of the municipality "Smolninskoye", including the chairman of the council, were absent on September 7 at the voting on the appeal. However, ten deputies, in accordance with federal law, were enough for a full-fledged quorum and the adoption of legitimate decisions. As a result, seven of those present voted to send an appeal to the State Duma, and Elena Mishkinis, who chaired the meeting of the Council, should organize it in the coming days, according to the law, Yuferev confirmed.
Answering DW's question about what kind of reaction he and his colleagues expect to his appeal, Nikita Yuferev emphasizes: "All our appeals, despite the presence of important and weighty addressees, are not directed We understand that most likely they will not answer us, or they will answer some nonsense, as was the case with my August letter.
This is rather an appeal to the Russians who are here in Russia, and who are also experiencing for what is happening. Every time we try to show them that they are not alone, that we are also here, that there are many of us - people who are against what is happening. This is not a "small number of traitors", as propaganda says. There are a lot of us."
Dmitry Palyuga takes a similar position: "We did this mainly to show other people who disagree with what is happening in the country that there are deputies who also disagree. And these MPs are ready to talk about it aloud."
Commenting on the fate of the Moscow Mundep Alexei Gorinov, who was found guilty in July of "spreading false information" about the Russian army and sentenced to seven years in prison for this, the St. Petersburg politician says: "Of course, we understand that we are taking risks, but we felt that this was the right thing to do now.
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