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World Class Hypocrite Jason Chaffetz Wants to Rescind Obama's Pension Over Speaking Fees

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When a president leaves office, it's pretty standard practice that they get paid to give speeches. Whether they donate the money or keep it depends on the president: while President Jimmy Carter rarely accepted compensation for speaking engagements, President Barack Obama recently made headlines for accepting a $400,000 fee to address Cantor Fitzgerald, a Wall Street institution he once criticized.

Ex-presidents also get paid a pension by the federal government, which varies depending on the president's postoffice income. Now, Chairman of the House Oversight Committee Jason Chaffetz has decided to use Obama's Cantor Fitzgerald gig as a reason to go after his presidential pension. Chaffetz decided to chime in on a USA Today editorial, which argued that Obama's speaking fees might incite Congress to target his pension. "Yes, it will," Chaffetz wrote in a tweet sharing the article on May 3.

Here's the problem with Chaffetz's moral outrage: presidents from both sides of the aisle have long amassed mini fortunes from private speaking gigs. Politico reported that George W. Bush has been paid between $100,000 and $175,000 per speech for the roughly 200 speeches he's given since leaving office in 2009. Former president Ronald Reagan was famously paid $2 million to visit Japan and open a trade dialogue with the country less than a year after leaving office.

Hillary Clinton's speaking fees, which were of much debate during the primaries, exceed W.'s: from 2001 until May 2016, Clinton gave 729 speeches and made roughly $210,795 for each. Collectively, former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton raked in a whopping $153 million in speeches between 2001 and when Clinton announced her candidacy for president.

This is not the first time Chaffetz has attempted to limit former presidents' pensions to $200,000. A bill that would restrict presidential pensions to $200,000 if their income exceeded $400,000 reached President Obama's office in July of 2016, but he vetoed the proposed law. With this in mind, it's hard not to see Chaffetz's commitment to going after Obama's pension as a ploy to bash a political foe.



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