It’s nowhere near what the average corporate CEO earns, but the annual salary of the president of the United States may be the envy of most Americans: $400,000.
That number does not include lodging at the White House, travel on Air Force One, living allowances, entertainment, staff and much more.
When a president leaves office, the checks and other benefits continue.
Here’s a look at some of those benefits, and how they came about.
What benefits do all former presidents get?
The Former Presidents Acts of 1958 provides for a pension and several other benefits. All presidents receive money for office space, equipment, staff, travel, entertainment and supplies.
If they were enrolled in the Federal Employees Health Benefits program for at least five years, former presidents get the same health benefits as other former government workers.
Ironically, former President Carter, America’s longest-living former president, was not eligible for that program since he was president for only four years and held no other federal government post.
One-term former President George H.W. Bush, who was vice president for eight years, as well as serving in Congress and as an ambassador, was eligible for health benefits but declined them.
Former presidents are guaranteed a funeral with full honors and burial at Arlington National Cemetery. But only two, former Presidents Kennedy and Taft, are buried there.
Biden’s big pension payday
When President Biden leaves the White House, he will be eligible for the standard annual pension that any cabinet secretary receives: $246,424. But the president also served eight years as vice president and spent 36 years as a U.S. senator from Delaware. All three pensions will total $413,000 a year, more than he made as president.
The federal government places very few limits on multiple pensions, and only a few states ban or limit “double dipping,” in which a government employee retires, collects a pension, and then returns to work in another government job.
For example, Burlington County, N.J., passed a law banning county departments from hiring anyone who is collecting a “taxpayer-funded retirement pension.”
A president’s other post-White House benefits
President-elect Trump has received more than $3 million in pension, office, printing, travel, and other allowances since his first term ended.
From 2016 to 2024, former President Clinton has received nearly $13 million in pension and other benefits. Former President George W. Bush has been paid just over $12 million in those same eight years. Former President Obama has received about $10.5 million. And Carter, famous for his frugality, has received just over $5 million in that same time.
Clinton, Bush and Obama may also receive pensions from other government positions they held.
Has a president been denied or refused benefits?
To date, no president has ever been denied a pension.
The Former Presidents Act of 1958, which established the current pension and benefits system, denies benefits to a president who has been impeached and convicted by Congress. Former President Nixon avoided that fate by resigning. Clinton and Trump were impeached but not convicted.
Former presidents and their spouses may receive protection by the U.S. Secret Service for life. Eleven years after his resignation, Nixon relinquished his protection — the only former president to do so.
Why do presidents receive pensions?
A few years after leaving the White House in 1953, former President Truman lobbied for financial support. Claiming dire financial straits, Truman wrote to then-House Speaker Sam Rayburn (D-Texas) in 1957 saying he might have to turn to the private sector or some other source beneath the dignity of a former president.
The upshot was the Former Presidents Act of 1958, which established the system of pension, allowances and office expenses in effect today.
But in 2021, University of Colorado Law School professor Paul Campos debunked the Truman “poverty” claim.
“Harry Truman was, as a direct result of being president, a very wealthy man on the day he left the White House, with an estimated net worth, in relative economic terms, of approximately $58 million in 2021 dollars,” Campos wrote.
The professor also claims that Truman misappropriated nearly all of the presidential expense account that Congress set up at the beginning of his second term. Truman also did the thing he claimed he wouldn’t do: Exploit his status as a former president, according to Campos.
“By the time Congress passed the FPA in response to Truman’s various claims that he was at least teetering on the brink of potential financial distress, Truman’s net worth was, in relative economic terms, approximately $72 million in 2021 dollars,” he wrote.
