After President Truman retired in near poverty the Congress changed the law and granted Ex-President’s a handsome retirement package, with pension, medical care and Secret Service protection. My question is, could these benefits be stripped from an Ex-President? Would it be worth it to impeach an ex-president, not to remove him from office, but to get the taxpayers off the hook for the expense of the person’s retirement benefits?
Yes, I’m aiming this at W, but there’s no reason to limit it to him. If it came to light that Clinton took bribes in exchange for the last second pardons he issued, I’d have no problem retroactively impeaching him either.
Clinton was already impeached by the House, but acquitted by the Senate and not removed from office. I don’t see how you could impeach retroactively, since the point is to remove them from office. (The constitution would also make him ineligible to hold office again, but I doubt they would bother)
To your question though, the constitution says,
“Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States: but the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law.”
I don’t believe it would be constitutional to strip retirement benefits from an impeached president.
You have to wonder what the practical point would be as well. Ex-presidents can collect hefty speaking fees and book deals. They usually make much more out of office than in it. Bill Clinton wasn’t exactly rich when he took office but he did now. The Bushes are loaded so they wouldn’t care about the relatively meager amount of money. They can pay for any health procedure out of pocket so they don’t even need health insurance. Secret Service protection probably is considered very important especially for someone like GWB but it only lasts for ten years now. It would probably be very expensive to put together a private security team at that level and would probably cost way more than all of the other benefits put together.
Impeaching an ex-pres for that purpose would burn through the total amount of the package probably in a matter of a few days if the matter was high-profile.
Clinton wasn’t impeached for anything relating to his 11th hour pardons, which was what my hypothetical mentioned. I take your point, but this isn’t a case where there is any double jeopardy concerns, other than the bogus way double jeapordy was used in that Ashley Judd movie of the same name.
I’m not entirely certain he could have been impeached for that. The POTUS has all but unlimited authority to pardon whoever they choose. That isn’t my main point though. The main point is, is it even possible to retroactively impeach? He no longer holds an office to be impeached of.
Uh, no. While he can pardon who he likes, the president cannot collect bribes for that consideration. J.C. Walton, a governor of Oklahoma, found this out - he was impeached in 1923 for just this thing.
Impeachment isn’t intended to punish somebody. Its purpose is to remove somebody from office. Taking away somebody’s pension or other retirement benefits is an entirely different subject.
One thing it points out is that it applies on a going forward basis. So similar legislation would probably need to be passed on a federal level and then it would apply to future presidents.
I’m not sure how I feel about the idea. On the one hand, I’m not delighted about whatever portion of my tax money will go to Bush’s pension check. On the other hand, pension forfeiture legislation would be just one more factor allowing wealthy politicians to act with impunity while any approximately middle-class folks who manage to make it into office have more to lose. Keep in mind that someone like Clinton would most likely have been getting vested in another pension and benefits plan during those years if he hadn’t served as president.
We have never let our presidents starve. The closest one to doing so was probably Grant, who was terminally ill with cancer when he discovered that a bad investment with a shady character in New York had left him broke. Even he was able to write his memoirs before his death and provide for his family - those memoirs are still held in pretty high regard today.
These days, between corporate boards and speeches, there really is no way for an ex-president to starve - he’d have to work at it. And while I think this has the potential to go too far, I think reforms are needed - just as it became clear that they were when Timothy McVeigh was due to be executed and the possibility of his burial in a veterans’ cemetery came up.
Crimes in office should strip you of the perquisites of that office, with few exceptions.