Presidential Perks Gone Royal
Page 11
In Eisenhower’s first term, a man dressed as a painter and carrying a ladder and equipment related to his ostensible position worked on a good stretch of fence on the street side of the White House’s South Lawn. After he had painted a bit, he put his ladder over the fence, painted a bit more, made chatter with the guards, then proceeded to move his gear and begin painting the house itself—he was stopped only when he neared the oval office. The man was arrested, but when it was learned that all he wanted to do was paint the words “I Quit” on the oval office wall, Ike ordered him released. “hell,” said Eisenhower, “Many days I have wanted to do just that myself.”
Of course, the Secret Service bristled with embarrassment, and James Rowley, the head of the Secret Service, hung on his wall a printed excerpt from a work by David Rankin Barbee. It read: “When John Wilkes Booth approached [President Lincoln’s box seats in Ford’s theatre], he was stopped by the sentry and told that he could not enter. ‘i am a Senator,’ responded Booth. ‘Mr. Lincoln has sent for me. I must see him on important business.’ his gentlemanly and genteel appearance deceived the sentinel, who allowed him to pass to the President’s box.”
While the Secret Service men and women may be a bit more relaxed with the chief executive in the mansion, they are invariably a bundle of nerves whenever the president exits those hallowed and heavily protected 18 acres. Whether campaigning or golfing, the president is never out of sight of Secret Service agents, who may be right by his side, somewhere nearby but out of sight, cached in snipers’ positions on rooftops in the general vicinity, or even combing the fairways for would-be attackers. It is important not to discount the political value of this protection.
It is true that the U.S. Secret Service is mandated to provide protection to major presidential and vice presidential candidates and their spouses, but only for the last 120 days of a general presidential election, unless a candidate specifically requests protection and those charged with making that decision deem it necessary. As defined in statute, the term “major presidential and vice presidential candidates” means “Those individuals identified as such by the Secretary of homeland Security after consultation with an advisory committee consisting of the Speaker of the house of Representatives, the minority leader of the house of Representatives, the majority and minority leaders of the Senate, and one additional member selected by the other members of the committee.”
If we all agree that cost of protection is not a frivolity, what does this do to our argument against extremely expensive and, in the majority, highly exorbitant, out-of-control, and in some cases, frivolous presidential perks? There is no contradiction. It is realistic to note that these costs rise enormously when presidents leave the White House fortress to attend social occasions, sporting events, a “date night” or go on vacation or travel in order to campaign for themselves or others.
As we have pointed out in these pages, we have given our commanders in chief the ultimate re-election tool. With nearly a billion dollar air armada made available to presidents at a miniscule fraction of its value, we citizens have, in addition to the perks imbedded in his daily activities, also given our presidents a formidable, perhaps overwhelming and certain unfair advantage for their re-elections
Taken in the aggregate, isn’t it worth considering that we Americans are threatening our democracy by giving such an avalanche of impressive assistance to incumbent presidents, enabling them to perpetuate themselves as the holders of office with such relative ease?
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it's the only thing that ever has.”
—Margaret Mead
Chapter Eleven
A Call to Action
We have almost come to the end of our journey together, and I hope you can now see clearly how the rise in perks has been relentless, with little press notice or public attention. Under each of our recent presidents, the value and numbers of the presidential perks have, in fact, exploded, so much that their share of the budget has now reached staggering proportions.
The growing chief executive perks are intermixed in the budgets of the National Park Service as well as the interior and Defense Departments, all of whose secretaries answer to the president.
There are also twenty-three separate accounts for unspecified “White House” costs. The best of writers, researchers and historians can only guesstimate, but as I reported before, the total yearly cost of today’s presidential perks has climbed to somewhere in the neighborhood of two billion dollars since President Obama took office.
One has to wonder if President Obama is even aware of the cumulative costs of his high life. When he takes Air Force One on a political fundraiser, do the costs to taxpayers even occur to him? On a campaign trip, does he ever consider that the cost to taxpayers of moving one, its tagalong twin, and all the supporting airplanes and equipment may be many, many times more than the money he raises for his own campaign? Did either the President or First Lady consider the extra cost to taxpayers (estimated at several hundreds of thousands of dollars) of their going to family vacation locations in separate airplane caravans, in one case less than two hours apart? Perhaps our recent presidents have accepted the growth of their perks by rationalizing that they are woefully underpaid and, in point of fact, they are. Their $450,000-a-year is a pittance compared to Oprah in broadcast, Madonna in concert, or NFL’s Tom Brady in a good year. They are even paid far less than George Washington’s salary in today’s dollars.
Even with his $50,000 annual expense account, a $100,000 nontaxable travel account and $19,000 for entertainment, and oh yes, that extra $1,000,000 “for the president’s unanticipated needs,” the President of the United States, the leader of the free world, at $400,000 a year, is still paid less than many CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.
However, we must also factor in that most have had remarkable earnings after their presidencies. Since he left office, former President Bill Clinton has earned over $65 million making speeches. In addition to Clinton, every recent president has also assumed his right to the intellectual property of his years in office and sold his presidential memoirs for many millions. Still, presidents must be well aware that their job is underpaid. That taxpayer bargain may result in a president’s belief that he is entitled to every plush perk he can envision.
We make no claim that American presidents turn increasingly greedy, but it can be accepted that election to the office does affect great change. No matter how affluent their previous lifestyles or how high their pre-presidency statuses, election to the presidency must be like winning the greatest of life’s lotteries. Kings, Queens, Prime Ministers, and the most powerful of private citizens, all stand when you enter, listen when you opine, record your every word. And for physical comforts or lifestyle enhancements, election to the presidency is like having your own Aladdin’s lamp and personal genie. You have only to envision something not already forced upon you and it becomes reality. Understandably, all this becomes heady stuff and must make it easier to convince yourself you are worthy of any perk you can envision.
Whatever the rationale, it is ridiculous that no one in our great government is able to put accurate totals on the whopping presidential expenses. It is also ridiculous that no one in or out of government is charged with overseeing these costs. It is ridiculous that Congress spends so much of its time in budget discussions while no one has focused on the presidential extravagances. And it is almost unbelievable that no president in these tough economic times has offered to reduce his side of the national extravagance by so much as a single dollar!
Traditionally, no one on the White House staff is ever asked to testify before the house or Senate Appropriations Subcommittees on Financial Services and General Government. Few members of those committees even attend sessions dealing with White House expenditures. Only a few curious tourists attend the open discussion. It is no wonder the costs keep escalating!
So here is my call for our action:
First, I enlist your support for a constitutional amendment, effective with the election of 2016, limiting our future presidents to a single consecutive term. We can debate the number of years of that term. My personal recommendation would be six; but whatever the length of the term, until we limit our chief executives to a single term we can expect to see the winning of a second term remain a major focus of their first. And we have learned there is no way to keep sitting presidents from assembling and using perks of their office to abet their reelections.
Second, I propose we give three very-heavy responsibilities to a bipartisan group. My candidates for that group, just for starters in order to stimulate thinking, would be such well-reputed men and women as Sandra Day O’Connor, the retired Supreme Court Justice, and former U.S. Senators Dale Miller and Al Simpson. Both of the latter gentlemen, incidentally, declined to run for re-election, in part because they believe Congress has become dysfunctional!
I would ask that starting group to agree on other members selected from present or former governors and members of Congress, from representatives of business, the arts, academia, labor, and from city governments. The responsibilities of the group? Several— and some are of democracy-saving importance.
First, I would have its members recommend a raise for our commanders in chief, setting a fair salary for what constitutes the world’s most heady post. We should not leave room for future men or women, when elected to be our leaders, to rationalize that grandiose perks are only fair compensation considering their underpaid status for their lofty roles on the world stage.
Two, until that day when our presidents are limited to a single term of whatever number of years, this group should devise a more realistic, more campaign-competitive pricing formula for the political usage of Air Force One and its accompanying air armada. This will be a challenge. Of course, we want our presidents to be secure, and the demands of the office necessitate our chief executive have access to the most advanced communications equipment. As our leader, our presidents deserve to travel in luxurious comfort.
However, the current reimbursements for campaign-related travel are totally unrealistic and a glaring inequity to competitors for the office. Absent Air Force One, no president would campaign for re-election via a first-class ticket on a commercial airline, the equivalent of which is, today, the only amount a president’s campaign committee pays. Non-president competitors for the office cannot meet campaign schedules without the lease of chartered jet aircraft, and that would seem a reasonable minimum charge to the campaign committee of a president competing to retain his office.
In 2011, President Obama used the Air Force One armada to attend 113 political fundraisers. it cost taxpayers millions of dollars an hour to fuel the armada. To have charged his campaign committee only the price of a first-class commercial ticket for his transportation makes no more sense than charging his campaign committee nothing at all. Our proposed committee would need to devise a formula better balancing the official requirements of a president and his political needs.
Third, I would have the group demand daylight on the presidential expenditures and recommend methods of accurate and public accounting.
Fourth, I would ask them to devise a method of respectful control over the presidential perks. Today, only a president’s conscience limits his additions to the presidential toy chest or their usage.
With his power over the millions employed by his cabinet departments, and with their combined resources available and responsive to any presidential whim, there is no law or constraint except public clamor that could deter a future commander in chief from continuing to abuse his privileges into the billions of dollars.
If, after all you have read and learned here, you are as concerned as I am, please respond to this call to action by telling your friends and associates about the alarming facts you have now learned. Urge your local print and broadcast media to cover this story. Write, wire or call your members of Congress and give them your views.
Without action, there is no one, in or out of government, with the authority or responsibility to tell a president that he is not allowed to add to his toy chest or his campaign war chest, regardless of the cost to taxpayers or its impact on the democracy.
If you find that troublesome, I invite you—no, I urge you—to become part of what is still the most powerful sound in the world—the combined voices of concerned Americans!
An Open Letter to President Obama
May, 2012
The President
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20500
My dear Mr. President:
I suppose the odds of your reading this letter are as slim as your losing your office in the coming election, considering how we citizens have paid for the tools that help you stack the odds against any opponent. But in the admittedly slim possibility you do have this book called to your attention, I will guess your people will try to contest some of the figures we have used.
Let me remind you, Sir, so you can remind them, that in the campaign of 2008 you bragged that, as a Senator, you passed legislation (S. 2590) that would give easy access to track every dollar in the country’s budget. I challenge your people, or anyone using the tools of that legislation, to verify the hundreds of millions of dollars the government spends to serve the First Family. I also challenge them to wade through the intricacies of the Defense and interior Departments’ budgets and see if they can come up with any more accurate accounting of the costs of your using Air Force One and the resources of our government to unfair advantage for your re-election.
One more thing, Mr. President, and this one is both an observation and a personal appeal. I have had the privilege of serving four United States presidents and being in the oval office many times during the terms of others. One of the things that impressed me in all those times in the oval office was the total respect universally given to that center of power. In Eisenhower’s time, even his brother, Dr. Milton Eisenhower, when he was in the oval office, always called Ike, “Mr. President.” Ronald Reagan was a casual-dressing Californian, but whenever he entered the oval office, he always put on his jacket. That was a measure of his respect for that historical, hallowed space.
You, Sir, in so many of the oval office photos taken by the official White House photography, often appear without a jacket and with your feet on the furniture, even on the magnificent desk, the “Resolute Desk,” built from the timbers of the HMS Resolute—a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes.
With all due respect, Sir, I remind you the White House is not your house. Just as with all previous presidents, that magnificent piece of our history is on loan to you from the American people.
A humble suggestion, Mr. President: You should not be putting your feet, shoes and all, on the furniture in the home of any of your constituents. And certainly not in the people’s home, the White House.
With full respect for you and with prayers for our country,
Sincerely,
Robert Keith Gray
Hon. Robert Keith Gray
Miami Beach, Fla.
Acknowledgements
This egg has been a long time hatching. I got the idea back in August, 2011 while I was at our family cabin in Estes Park, Colorado and happened upon an old edition of Readers Digest. This one had been saved, I suppose, because it carried Q&A interviews with the two presidential candidates. Since I had served presidents in previous administrations, I was intrigued by this opportunity to match candidate Obama’s campaign promises to the record of his first three years in office.
On reading, I noted that Senator Obama promised an open administration, and told his interviewer that he had passed S. 2590, under which a citizen “could find answers to any query about his government’s expenditures.”
As far back as the Eisenhower Administration, I had observed that whatever a president or his key minions in the White House wanted would instantly appear; its cost is
never a consideration. Using Obama’s Senate Bill 2590, I tried to put a figure on the cost to taxpayers of the Obama presidency. Just as in past administrations, I found that major costs are buried deep inside the budgets of other departments, largely Defense and the interior Department’s Park Service. Challenged, I determined to ferret them out—which is why I am so very indebted to the ever-expanding group who joined me in my determination to present the facts in this book.
Whenever I was ready to give up, one of my many assistants, but particularly professional research specialists Mary Earley and Susan Strange, along with dogged Robin Miller McGrath and my invaluable and very-determined secretary, Indira Sukhra, would come up with astounding new facts to keep me going. Early on, Linda Cashdan of The Word Process provided much appreciated encouragement.
When I was introduced to Judy Katz of Ghostbooksters.com, I found a truly superb editor and taskmistress, who also doubled as a taxpayer fully outraged at what we were discovering. In addition to her valuable input, Judy introduced me to her skilled colleague Wendy Glavin of Katz Creative, a marketing communications guru, and graphic designer Bruce Jacobson of BYJ Communications, all of whom were most helpful in moving this project along. And when we were finished with final copy, we benefited from the critique of legal expert and good friend Steve Chameides, esq., of Foley & Lardner.