After Obama’s speech to Wall Street, Congress might again try to slash presidential pensions

[WestVirginiaRebel]

The Blaze

Lawmakers plan to reintroduce a bill to cap presidential pensions for former U.S. presidents and to reduce the payment thereafter once a former president’s income exceeds a certain level.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) said they will reintroduce identical bills this month in the House and Senate called the Presidential Allowance Modernization Act. The bill, which then-President Barack Obama vetoed last year, would cap presidential pensions at $200,000 annually, while leaving another $200,000 available for extras like travel and office staff expenses. But if a former president’s annual income exceeds $400,000, the pension payment would shrink — dollar-for-dollar.

When the bipartisan bill was originally introduced last year, it passed through the House and the Senate easily, but Obama unexpectedly vetoed the measure in July, saying it would “impose onerous and unreasonable burdens” on former presidents, forcing them to lay off existing staff and make changes to office spaces.

A spokeswoman for Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), a co-sponsor of the original bill and the top Democrat on the House Committee of Oversight and Government Reform, said he would likely support the measure again.

“Cummings definitely supports the concept, and if we can work out the technical issues with the bill that arose late in the last Congress, we expect he would strongly support it again,” spokeswoman Jennifer Hoffman Werner said, according to USA Today.

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What to do when former Presidents don't need a retirement pension.