NTUF-
Former President Joe Biden recently landed a $10 million book deal for his presidential memoir—just one of many lucrative opportunities available to former presidents. Yet, despite his private-sector earnings and personal wealth, Biden is receiving more taxpayer-funded perks than any other former president.
By virtue of his time in the Senate and as Vice President, Biden qualifies for an annual congressional pension starting at $166,374. Under the Former Presidents Act of 1958 (FPA), he also receives a presidential pension equal to a Cabinet Secretary’s salary—$250,600 in 2025. Together, these benefits provide him with a taxpayer funded annual retirement income of nearly $417,000, exceeding the $400,000 salary paid to the president. read more
I believe it’s shameful to take money from someone else’s labor when you are in a position to haul your own freight and, for biden, he can do that easily. His whole family are shockingly “low rent”.
Biden should be in jail.
Until his conviction for Treason.
mortem tyrannis
izlamo delenda est …
All municipal, state and federal pensions are unsustainable ponzi schemes.
If you’re fortunate enough to have one you probably view it differently.
I have friends who retired from City, County and State jobs who make more retired than when they worked.
AA, just curious, is it also shameful for a retiree who has paid into Social Security his entire life but did well for himself and does not”need” the money, to cash those SS checks?
“If you’re fortunate enough to have one you probably view it differently.”
Nope, I have a state pension and view it the same way you do.
Rich, I paid int SS for over 50 years. It’s not an ‘entitlement’, it’s an ‘investment’.
If you put money in a bank every payday for 50 years, you’d want to get it back, with interest.
^^^, yep, totally agree.
The villains in the above thread is not the guy who cashes those pension checks, even though he does not need it, but the corrupt system (and the malicious/evil symbiotic relationship between unions and bureaucrats) that wastes taxpayer dollars.
If JD manages to secure the presidency, once relegated to the private sector, he will draw similar pensions from the government. This should draw similar ire from the public, even though we like JD but hate Biden.
The system is broken and needs to be fixed from the inside.
HE CAN’T SIGN HIS OWN NAME.
He Certainly WON’T Tell the TRUTH even if he could REMEMBER it.
And Dr. pRESIDENT JILL wrote 3 illustrated Picture Books.
BUT
He CERTAINLY would be a GREAT SPOKESPERSON for KEVLAR DIAPERS of which he obviously is an EXPERT.
GoB,
That is exactly how it should be looked at.
Up here in Canuckistan, the payments get added to your declared income & you pay taxes on it at whatever percentage you are assessed.
Very low income keeps almost the whole thing etc..
I haven’t crunched the numbers, but paying SS over 45 years, then applying interest on that money that I should have in my Social Security Trust Fund Account, I’ll never have access to the full amount paid and earned.
Raiding the Social Security Trust Fund was a precedent set in 1968 by another progressive president, Lyndon B. Johnson, to help pay for the failed Vietnam War.
The TRUTH is Congress passed legislation in 1981 to permit inter-fund “borrowing” among the three Trust Funds (the Old-Age and Survivors Trust Fund; the Disability Trust Fund; and the Medicare Trust Fund).
To date, the federal government has borrowed over $2 trillion from the Social Security Trust Fund to spend on other programs.
My mother has a state pension but loses ground every year to inflation deliberately inflicted by the government. Pension goes up $50…rent goes up $75.
@Rich Taylor — I’m not sure I understand your question. The way I see it, though, is that if one is able to get along without relying on taxes paid by the labor of others, they should. I think we all know in our dark, little hearts when we are coming out on the long end of the stick through no effort of our own. I once met a fellow who crowed about how he successfully “double dipped” our state’s pension fund. I don’t know how it works, but he described receiving a full pension from one job and then another from another job. I guess it has to do with what is considered the “vestment” period in each job. It would be like retiring from the military after 20 years, whether you’re actually retirement age or not. You still qualify for a full retirement.
Maybe this will also help illustrate my view: My adult child once asked me why I didn’t take advantage of many of the perks of military service, like VA loans, etc. She reminded me that I was ‘entitled’ to those benefits and that they were “free”. I told her that, to my mind anyway, it seemed to defeat the reason I served, and it would diminish — for me, anyway — the chivalry that beats in my heart for the love of my country and the desire to honor the sacrifices of those who fought and died to lay this freedom at my doorstep. Because I was and am able to drag my own bags to whatever degree I can, I will. That may sound very corny to many, but I do think of the individual people who are working an extra shift, just trying to make ends meet and worried sick about meeting the basic needs of their families every month. If I can lighten their load by even a dollar I will. Because I don’t feel entitled to their labor even if the gov’t says I am.
Although I am far past the age of SS qualification, I haven’t signed up for SS yet, so I don’t “cash” any SS checks.
maybe you are unaware of how pensions work, they are not paid from the labor of others. I was a state employee for 28 years and every one of those 28 years I paid into my pension fund. the concept is simple, monies paid collectively from thousands of people are put into a pool, that pool of money is invested by professionals and over time the sum total of that pool rises in value, sufficient to give members a portion of it monthly. just like social security, pensions are earned by monthly contributions.
where the corruption lies is in simple arithmetic. monies coming into the fund is insufficient to cover monies going out to pensioners. collective bargaining contracts, negotiated between unions and elected officials have made it unfavorable to taxpayers. everybody knows that like social security, the unfunded pension systems of the nation are untenable, the very definition of kicking the can down the road.
@Rich Taylor — Yes, I do understand the differences between a regular pension paid into by a group of people and a tax-payer-paid “pension.” I think the point I was making is that, if it’s possible, we should not be taking money from other American workers — especially if it is clearly exploitive, even if the gov’t has wrangled generous “entitlements” for us. A social safety net has turned into a hammock. I’m not including SS in this, but that program — which started out with very good and logical intentions — has morphed into an unrecognizable source of money for all kinds of bad things. Unfortunately, I think even too many decent people regard gov’t largess as “Well, everyone else does it…I may just as well get mine.” I think if we stripped out all the people collecting SS who are able-bodied and work-aged, we’d be shocked at where so much of the taxpayers’ money is spent. I suppose it’s hard to understand my old fashioned thinking about it.
“I suppose it’s hard to understand my old fashioned thinking about it.”
No, I get it………..I think, but we view this differently, not right or wrong, just different.
Maybe because I pay an obscene amount of taxes every year, a boatload, whatever I can get back, legally, to mitigate that burden, I’ll do it.
This is not a zero-sum game, where if I forego my share, it will magically go to someone more in need. The way the government prints, abuses, misuses, and wastes money means there is rarely any accountability.
And I view SS and my pension as precarious and temporary. Sooner or later, the cards will all come crashing down, so I will take it while it is still available, but I have planned for its disappearance altogether.
Yea, right. Autopen Joe’s writing a book? Highly unlikely. He couldn’t sniff his way outta an outhouse.