Presidential Retirement Plans

 Presidential Retirement Plans

Presidential Retirement Benefits

 Ever wonder what type of retirement benefits a former president receives, once he leaves office? Well you’ll be surprised what they get. The benefit package came about due to former President Harry S. Truman complaining to former House Majority Leader John McCormack that he was going broke due to excessive postage in responding to all the correspondence he received. The year was 1957 and by 1958 the Former Presidents Act (FPA) was created in Congress to help maintain the dignity of former Presidents by allotting them $25,000 per year for postage and office expenses. Truman never received any the FTA funding, but President Eisenhower was the first to benefit from it.

The FTA is administered by the General Services Administration (GSA). The FTA begins the minute the President leaves office and is paid out yearly until said President dies. Each President received not only the lifetime federal pension is between $210,700 per year to $230,000.00 per year. This figure is taxable, but each president also received non-taxable funds to cover office leases, cleaning services, office staffing, and office supplies. This amount does not include secret service costs for the protection of the former president. There is also a widow's pension for the surviving widow of any former president should she outlive the president. That costs the taxpayer $20,000 per year for the lifetime of the widow along with free postage unless the widow waives the offer of help.

Total overall benefits cost the taxpayer over $5.6 million per year for the following: Remember we have former Presidents Carter, Clinton, Bush, Obama, and now Trump.

Office Space and Staffing Allowances: Beginning 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. For the first 30 months after leaving the office the GSA pays out $150,000 per year to help offset the costs of establishing their office. Staffing allocation is another $150,000 yearly, anything above that is paid for by the former President personally.

Travel Expenses: For travel that is related to U.S. Federal Government business, the GSA pays for the former President and up to two staff members for expenses that are at most 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. All personal travel is at the cost of the former president and not compensated by the GSA.

Health Benefits: Many believe that former Presidents receive lifetime healthcare once they leave office, but that is not true. In fact, unless they hold the Presidential office for two terms or hold another federal position such as Congress/Senate or federal employment position, they are not eligible for lifetime health benefits under the Federal Employees Health Benefits program. Former President Carter is the only living former president who is not eligible for lifetime healthcare benefits. 

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 under the Former Presidents Protection Act of 2012. Prior to the enactment of the FPPA of 2012, former Presidents only received Secret Service details for 10 years after leaving office. Security after that time would be paid by the former President. In 1985 Former President Richard Nixon gave up his Secret Service protection and paid for his own security. He thought the expense was too much for the taxpayer to burden, at that time it was $ 3 million per year.

Surprisingly enough Congress decided in April 2015 to introduce a bill titled The Presidential Allowance Modernization Act that would cap the pensions of all former and future presidents at $200,000 per year and reduce current provisions in the FPA that would link pensions to the annual salary of cabinet secretaries. The bill would also reduce allowances to be paid to no more than $400,000 per year.

Elizabeth Kilbride is a Writer and Editor with forty years of experience in writing with 12 of those years in the online content sphere. Graduating with an Associate of Arts from Pheonix University, then a degree in Mass Communication and Cyber Analysis from Phoenix University, then on to Walden University for her master’s in criminology with emphasis on Cybercrime and Identity Theft and is currently studying for her Ph.D. degree in Criminology, her portfolio includes coverage of politics, current affairs, elections, history, and true crime. In her spare time, Elizabeth is also a gourmet cook, life coach, and avid artist, proficient in watercolor, acrylic, pen and ink Gouache, and pastels. As a political operative having worked on over 300 campaigns during her career, Elizabeth has turned many life events into books and movie scripts while using history to weave interesting storylines. She also runs 6 various blogs from art to life coaching, to food, to writing, and opinion or history pieces each week.  

Law Makers crying for a raise Should learn Economics first.

 

Law Makers crying for a raise Should learn Economics first.

Recently Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, a representative from New York cried that Congress needs a pay increase because they can’t afford to do their job on such a low pay scale. Let’s look at this issue from a different perspective than what AOC is looking at it. Congress is paid $174,000 per year to do their job; the Office of Revenue and the Office of Management and Budget pay their staff to work in their office. On top of that, the position to which she holds has a benefit package that doesn’t even compare to the real work, in their world, meaning Congress, is paid an outrageous retirement package, Free healthcare, 10 paid holidays, three weeks’ paid vacation and unlimited sick days. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average worker only gets free healthcare if their employer can afford it, which these days doesn’t happen, in addition, the average worker only gets 7 sick days per year if they are lucky, vacation days are only 1 week up to one year and maybe 2 weeks after 1 year. Their retirement plan is not paid for unless they invest wisely, and the stock market doesn’t crash on them before they retire.

When we calculate in the other benefit that the Congressional House and Senate are afforded that the average worker doesn’t get, would be the subsidy that allows them an annuity of $34,000 per year for housing rental, hotel stays, and meals while doing their official work while in the nation’s capital. A total of 217 lawmakers utilized this annuity and guess what they don’t have to produce receipts to get this money paid out to them as reimbursement. Sorry but any employer in the public or even state level must show receipts and justify the expenses being requested, but Congress and Senate don’t have to and the breakdown for this luxury is 113 Democrats, and 104 Republicans claimed this annuity in 2023.  That’s right folks, lawmakers spent over 1.4 million in taxpayer dollars to subsidize lodging and food while representing you In Washington, DC.  This annuity is a fiscal pay raise that was authorized by the 117^th Congress. Slipped into a bill no doubt. Isn’t that a nice bonus, get a salary plus housing and food chit that throws your base salary up to $208.000 per year oh and only $174,000 is taxable. Nice huh. If AOC can’t live on that then she really needs to go back to bartending and then to college, because apparently, she has a degree in Economics? I think she was sleeping in class because she had no knowledge of figures or finance.

My Friend, John Penman, a former soldier, has a good idea for AOC and her fiscal crying baby friends, he suggests that members of Congress should contract with Residence Inn or another hotel in the area for a nice Suite for every member that needs it. If the member doesn’t want to live there, then they can find their own lodging at their own expense. For the Senate, each state should provide a nice three-bedroom house with a dining room (they are in office for 6 years after all). They the Senator doesn’t’ want to live there, then the state can rent it out at fair market value on a year-to-year basis.  While her constituents flounder financially, AOC lives in a building in DC that sports a Rooftop Pool and an Indoor Golf Simulator. She’s living high on the hog for sure. Sounds like she’s living in the swanky Collective in Southeast DC. Good choice AOC nice digs. Why don’t you move to a more affordable location, or better yet have your boyfriend pay half the rent so it will allow you to buy food on your own and not have to use the $34,000 annuity.

Artist and Author Elizabeth Kilbride is a former political operative, author, scriptwriter, historian, and journalist. business professional, creative artist, and life coach consultant. Ms. Kilbride holds a master’s in criminology and a BS in Business Management she stepped out of the loop for a while but is now back with a powerful opinion and voice in the direction of this country and our economy. As a life coach, she is available to counsel individuals to enjoy their dreams and a better life. Ms. Kilbride loves to travel and photograph her surroundings and is also a gourmet cook who loves to garden and preserve food for the winter months.

Border Crisis or irresponsibility on the administration's part?

 

Border Crisis or irresponsibility on the administration's part?

This is an election year, and one must wonder why this administration is allowing millions of illegal aliens to enter America through the southern border and cart them off to democratic-held states such as New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, and California by the thousands. Is it so they can ensure new voter rolls to boost their election numbers in those states? Or are they ensuring that the travel and tourism funds in those states are destroyed by the influx of illegals housed in hotels paid for by taxpayers?

Currently, the mayors of Boston, Chicago, and New York are complaining about the overflowing numbers being bussed to their cities daily from the border causing crippling effects to the economy of their cities. After all those same mayors only, a year ago were welcoming those illegals without a complaint and that’s because the federal funding was pouring in by the millions to their city, but now that the federal government has cut off the money spicate there is a problem. These cities were ok with accepting illegals if the millions of federal dollars were pouring in monthly to pay for the housing, feeding, and supporting of the illegals? But once the money faucet has been turned off, they now have a problem with the influx of illegals entering their city. Then again those who are elected to the offices of congressional and senatorial positions are also feeling the heat, along with the governor of each of those states, because the mismanagement of federal dollars is out of control.

Media outlets are criticizing these mayors for their failure to accept illegals without noting the issues surrounding these illegals. It is now winter in the northern part of America and these same cities can’t house their normal homeless citizens during cold nights but are expected to house millions of illegals over average American citizens. There is something wrong with this picture for sure. America is now supposed to house, feed, and support illegals from other countries who didn’t come to this country legally and through proper channels and not complain about it. When is the media going to hound this administration for the incompetent handling of this situation?

Without a change in leadership, there will be nothing accomplished to stop this influx of illegals crossing the border. None of these illegals should have the capability of voting in November for our next President, nor any other elected official. With a staggering 300,000 migrants crossing the border daily the U.S. Customs and Border Enforcement cannot handle the flow much less process that many in one day without exhausting our resources. The Southern Border must be closed once and for all and those who have already come across the border should be fingerprinted and run through Interpol, Europol, and NCIC to ensure we are not allowing criminals to enter our country to harm us in any way. As you can see by the picture above, those at the border are already wearing Biden t-shirts? Where are they getting them from? Who is issuing them to migrants? The Democratic party is who is passing them out to everyone and anyone at the border. This crisis must be stopped and stopped now. 

Artist and Author Elizabeth Kilbride is a former political operative, author, scriptwriter, historian, and journalist. business professional, creative artist, and life coach consultant. Ms. Kilbride holds a master’s in criminology and a BS in Business Management she stepped out of the loop for a while but is now back with a powerful opinion and voice in the direction of this country and our economy. As a life coach, she is available to counsel individuals to enjoy their dreams and a better life. Ms. Kilbride loves to travel and photograph her surroundings and is also a gourmet cook who loves to garden and preserve food for the winter months.

 

 

We are losing our moral fiber as a Country.

 

Over the last few years, I’ve observed more and more people looking as though they are clueless as to what is happening on the political front in this country. Not only are they clueless, but they also seem to not want to bother to learn what is happening around them. The erosion of the moral fiber of this country began right after 9/11/2011. This was when I began to notice something interesting while I was traveling for business and as I looked at my fellow travelers, I noticed that no one was smiling at all, well except a few children excited to be going somewhere special. Outside of those children, no adult was happy or even smiling. Yet everyone seemed to be complaining about something. Complaining about flights being late, hectic security lines, long lines at concession stands, and the lack of seating in the waiting areas. Talk about negative attitudes.

Then we come to today where we have Americans who once cared not caring to consider the direction of this country and how it’s being run by our current administration and other elected officials in Washington, DC. Talk about a serious lack of moral fiber in the citizenry of America. We’ve got kids running amuck claiming to be something they’re not, boy vs. girl, vs. tree, etc. You’ve got elected officials lying about their stand on issues, well that’s nothing new right? Then we’ve got judges forgetting what they learned in law school and handing down verdicts that are politically motivated instead of based on case law. We’ve got nominees who don’t know what New York Times vs. Sullivan case law is about. These same individuals don’t know what a Stay or an injunction order is in any lawsuit or case. These same individuals don’t know what the dormant commerce clause means, nor do they know what Articles 2 and 5 under the Constitution were when asked, two very powerful Articles in the Constitution, yet judges who went to law school couldn’t say what they were even though it’s taught in the first year of law school. They should have known what they were based on their Civics classes in high school, but apparently, they weren’t paying attention in either class. What floored me listening to the nominee answering Senator’s questions, one in particular hit me hard and puzzled me that this nominee spent 12 years as an assistant attorney general and 9 years on the bench yet couldn’t answer the question as to what purposivism is? Her reply was to spout off her history in the legal field and said that she had never been asked that question before. Well Judge it means “approach to statutory and constitutional interpretation under which common law courts interpret an enactment (a statute, part of a statute, or a clause of a constitution) within the context of the law's purpose.” But then again if you were a real judge who knew the law and understood the law as it stands instead of making it up based on your political ideology or what you’re told to make it to be, you’d have known the true definition of the word. Another question that went unanswered because the so-called experience judge couldn’t explain what the Brady Motion was, again this is first-year law school learned stuff. Hey, judge it means, a pretrial discovery rule that was established by the United States Supreme Court in Brady v. Maryland (1963). “The rule requires that the prosecution must turn over all exculpatory evidence to the defendant in a criminal case. Exculpatory evidence is evidence that might exonerate the defendant.” But then again as a judge, you’d never have come across any case before you that might call for exculpatory evidence, right? These nominees are a joke and of course, the Senate voted for the worst one of all to be accepted as a federal judge not because she is the brightest bulb in the box but because she is a woman and a former judge before an Indian tribunal, no because she was the best candidate. What is wrong with these Senators voting in the worst of the barrel that the President can bring forward as a nominee for a federal judgeship.

Oh, then we have the Satan cult being brought into schools to teach an after-school special program and parents are allowing this crap as accepting the vaccine. Parents need to start removing their kids from public school and start homeschooling them immediately. That is one way of letting your state and federal officials know you’re fed up with their trying to indoctrinate your kids by hitting them in the purse strings. You see, every child in the school system affords your state and board of education federal and state funding so by homeschooling your kids, you take away that funding from them and once they start to lose thousands of dollars a year, they’ll start to get the picture that the electorate is fed up with their ideologies and agenda. Don’t let the local authorities try and snowjob you into believing that you can’t do it, because you can and should.

Let’s not forget the amount of hate, despair, and anxiety people are feeling these days. One must wonder what is causing it. Well, I’ve come to realize it’s the social media aspect of our daily life that is the cause of most of it. We no longer interact with human beings in person anymore. Then we have information overload that doesn’t make sense at times because we can’t find true data, news, or information in general to allow us to decide which way to think or act. Then we have the economic woes and the insecurity that those economic woes cause us to be afraid or suspicious of everything around us. This and all the above causes depression and serious anxieties that ultimately cause a person to seek suicide to rid themselves of their troubles.

It is the morals of this country that are also causing this despair within our culture, not to mention the uncertainty of the future based on incompetent leadership across all levels of our government from the local level to the federal level. But what can we do about it you might ask, well become better informed and involved in your community and the national level. Don’t just say I can’t do anything about it, I’m not political. Well get political and start to raise your voices and demand a better representation of your voice at all levels of government. If you don’t start to mend this country’s moral fiber, you might as well dig a hole and bury yourself in your backyard. Because soon there won’t be a country for you to care about.  

Artist and Author Elizabeth Kilbride is a former political operative, author, scriptwriter, historian, and journalist. business professional, creative artist, and life coach consultant. Ms. Kilbride holds a master’s in criminology and a BS in Business Management she stepped out of the loop for a while but is now back with a powerful opinion and voice in the direction of this country and our economy. As a life coach, she is available to counsel individuals to enjoy their dreams and a better life. Ms. Kilbride loves to travel and photograph her surroundings and is also a gourmet cook who loves to garden and preserve food for the winter months.

 

 

Vaccine or Else, back fired.

 

A few months ago, the Pentagon decided that anyone in uniform who refused the vaccine for Covid should be discharged and that number was pretty high. Think about all the money that went into training those warriors of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and even the Air Force which was lost due to some bureaucrat at the Pentagon who believed the hype over COVID-19 vaccine shots that we all know now was useless. With the amount deployed overseas this past year due to conflicts in many different countries, the military is scrambling to find new warriors since this Administration has caused a serious decline in recruiting for all branches. 

With no new recruits, the remaining warriors are tired, withdrawn, and utterly fed up with the system, and the senior brass who don’t give a crap about their warriors, only their own careers.

What I find funny is that the Army has decided in their ultimate wisdom to go back to those to whom they threw out and discharged due to rejecting the COVID Vaccine due to the mandates handed down, only to find that those individuals have moved on with their lives. I don’t blame any of them for refusing to come back into the Army where they were disrespected and wanted to be used as guinea pigs for a vaccine that hadn’t even been cleared by the medical community under proper protocols.

This kind of recall is strictly because the Army recruiting challenges have caused serious readiness problems under the current conflict situations. Too bad the Army and the Pentagon didn’t think ahead and realize this was going to happen when they began their rant and discriminating practices of forcing trained warriors out of the military over a flu shot. But again this has been a major problem within the halls of the Pentagon for many years, never thinking ahead, instead creating a kneejerk reaction to a problem that really isn’t a problem. Yet the real problems about morale and welfare are overlooked or rejected because they don’t fit the mandate set forth by an administration that is hell-bent on destroying our country instead of safeguarding and properly defending it.

I lobbied for the military for many years on Capital Hill in Washington, DC and I can say with knowledge that the Department of Defense can’t fix itself much less fix the branches under their umbrella. Some officers are more interested in their next promotion than in helping their current soldiers, oh wait they aren’t in command of any unit; therefore, they loan their loyalty to the administration and those who are showing signs of an un-American agenda and ideology.

A case in point would be to look at the senior brass of our military who seem not to be able to find their way out of a paper bag, much less out of a war zone with a successful battle plan under their belt. No wonder Senator Tuberville was halting the promotions
of so many military officers. Was it because he saw that they weren’t performing the way they should be and, therefore, didn’t deserve a promotion? So I ask you why would any of the discharged warriors want to return and serve under such disgraceful so-called leaders who tried to force them out, sorry, and mandate them to take a vaccine that has now been proven to be ineffective in fighting the FLU? I surely wouldn’t if I were them.  Hey Army leadership, try treating your soldiers better and maybe your recruiting numbers will increase in the next fiscal year instead of declining more than 25%  as it has in recent years. Maybe you should consider apologizing to those whom you disrespected and forced to obtain the mandated vaccine and take responsibility for any ill effects they may cause due to having to be forced into taking the vaccine. Your actions are considered conduct unbecoming under the UCMJ and considered misconduct. Maybe you should resign or better yet be brought up on criminal charges for your misconduct and misdeeds. You not only lost sight of your duty but also your humanity to accept the version of the mandate without the proper insight into the reality of the actions being forced upon your warriors. You should question certain orders being handed down that don’t seem appropriate for warfighting capabilities or tasks. Do your job damn It and take care of your warriors don’t insult them by sending them a letter “inviting” them back into the military now that you’re lacking in the proper number of recruits to do the job of defending this nation. I never thought I’d say this but, I’m ashamed of all of you for your lack of honor and distinction in wearing the uniform of the United States military.  

Artist and Author Elizabeth Kilbride is a former political operative, author, scriptwriter, historian, and journalist. business professional, creative artist, and life coach consultant. Ms. Kilbride holds a master’s in criminology and a BS in Business Management she stepped out of the loop for a while but is now back with a powerful opinion and voice in the direction of this country and our economy. As a life coach, she is available to counsel individuals to enjoy their dreams and a better life. Ms. Kilbride loves to travel and photograph her surroundings and is also a gourmet cook who loves to garden and preserve food for the winter months.