All of Bill Clinton’s Money
February 28, 2007
Former President Bill Clinton is one of a kind, but we knew that already. No president before him has managed to cash in from his time in office with such shameless abandon.
An article in The Washington Post by John Solomon and Matthew Mosk is staggering in its revelations of Mr. Clinton’s greed. In the six years since he left the presidency, Mr. Clinton has taken in nearly $40 million — between $9 and $10 million of it last year. Mr. Clinton averaged “almost a speech a day” in 2006. Twenty percent of his fees reportedly “were for personal income.” The rest of his speeches, says The Post, were for no fee or for donations to Mr. Clinton’s foundation.
Unlike liberal Democrats, I am not obsessed with how much others make, as long as it’s honest money and they pay their taxes. It ought to be a concern, though, when so much money is paid to a former president by foreign governments, foreign entities, and corporations with interests in U.S. foreign and domestic policies.
While Bill Clinton is no longer in a position to determine such policies, his wife, the junior senator from New York and Democratic presidential candidate, is and she may soon be in an even more powerful position. Given the Clintons’ history of questionable political, business and personal relationships, can anyone say with certainty that the providers of this largess are uninterested in influencing a President Hillary Clinton through her husband?
Were it not for the disclosure forms required of high-level officials, we might never have known the full extent of the Clinton ATM (always throw money) machine.
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