I know former Presidents get a pension, Secret Service protection (10 yrs, formerly for life), and funding for their presidential libraries. What else? What was denied to Nixon? Does resigning in and of itself make a former POTUS ineligible for benifits or was did Congress pass an act specifically to punish Nixon?
See, I just don’t get why Congress limited SS protection for former Presidents to ten years after leaving office. It’s not as if it’s that expensive, since there are now only two living ex-Presidents (though in a year and ten months there’ll be three), and I for one don’t begrudge the cost of trying to protect the Clinton and Bush families.
The major expense was that they had to protect not only the President, but also the widow and minor children until the age of 18. Widows can outlast their husband by a long time, and as Presidents were elected at younger ages, they also had younger children.
I believe the most expensive* President in this sense was John Kennedy. Jackie survived him by 31 years, plus his children Caroline and John Jr. were quite young (6 and 4, I think) when he died, so they received Secret Service protection for 12 and 14 years after that.
*The actual dollar amounts might be less, given the prices back then. But the length of time that his family received these benefits was quite long, since at that time they were lifetime.
The changes in Presidential pension & benefits law were made after Nixon had left office, and was already collecting his benefits. And the changes applied only to future retired Presidents – it did not retroactively change the benefits already awarded. (I don’t think such changes would even be legal.)
If Congress had wanted to ‘punish’ Nixon, all they would have had to do was to move a bit faster on the Bill of Impeachment that had been distributed to the House of Representatives. Nixon resigned very quickly after that, and so was able to keep his presidential pension and benefits. Had he been convicted by the Senate, he would have lost all these benefits. Had he resigned while the impeachment process was in progress, it’s likely that he would have also lost these benefits. (The law isn’t very clear on this, and the feeling of the country at that time would have been against him.)
The 10 year Secret Service protection law was enacted in 1994 (during the Democratic Congress) and became effective in 1997. I’m looking for some reason for the change, but have come up empty so far.
The two other benefits I would add to the list are entitlements to a state funeral (including burial at Arlington National Cemetery) and ability to receive treatment at military hospitals.
My bad. I was thinking that since Nixon, Ford, and Reagan were all dead, Carter surely should be as well. At least subconsciously I must have been, since I never even thought of him.
I was not aware that stating something like ‘the President flies around in Air Force 1’ needed a cite.
I suppose you might take issue with the fringe benefit reference, and if so then I’ll point out I have never heard of the President flying on Southwest or Jet Blue when he goes on vacation or goes on the stump for fellow political candidates on the campaign trail.
You didn’t say “he President flies around in Air Force 1”, you said “unlimited free travel on Air Force 1”. Which is not correct.
The President gets free travel on Air Force 1 only while acting as Chief Executive of the country. When the President flies somewhere for a political event, he does so on Air Force 1, but his political party or his campaign committee pays for it. (There is a loophole in this, which has been heavily used by the current President. If he flies to some city to give a public speech, the government pays for the flight. And even if he just happens to hold a couple of fundraising events for his political party while in that city, the political party does not pay anything for that – because he was in town anyway, on public business.)
However, to get back to the OP’s question, former Presidents do not get to travel on Air Force 1, unless they happen to be invited by the current President to accompany him on a flight.
To put a finer point on it: there is no “Air Force 1”. Air Force 1 is a callsign used for whatever plane the current POTUS happens to be on. Put Dubya in a twin-engine Cessna and it’s Air Force 1. Bill Clinton may or may not ride in the jets that most commonly carry that callsign, but unless George W. Bush is on it, it’s not Air Force 1.
Lady Bird Johnson is still alive (though no longer very active in public), more than 34 years after Lyndon kicked.
Also, Jackie gave up SS protection when she married Aristotle Onassis in 1968, so she was only covered for about 5 years after JFK shuffled off this mortal coil.
Strictly speaking, this only applies to Air Force aircraft. For instance, the S-3 Viking he flew on to the USS Abraham Lincoln back in 2003 was Navy One. His personel helicopters are Marine One and (formerly) Army One. If he’s riding in a Cessna, unless it’s a T-37, it very well might not be Air Force One.