Clinton’s lecture fees feed fortune
WASHINGTON – Former president Bill Clinton, who came to the White House with modest means and left deeply in debt, has collected nearly $40 million in speaking fees over the past six years, according to interviews and financial disclosure statements filed by his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.
Last year, one of his most lucrative since leaving the presidency, Clinton earned $9 million to $10 million on the lecture circuit. He averaged almost a speech a day – 352 for the year – but only about 20 percent were for personal income. The others were given for no fee or for donations to the William J. Clinton Foundation, the nonprofit group he founded to pursue causes such as the fight against AIDS.
His paid speeches included $150,000 appearances before landlord groups, biotechnology firms and food distributors as well as speeches in England, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia that together netted him more than $1.6 million. On one particularly good day in Canada, Clinton made $475,000 for two speeches, more than double his annual salary as president.
“I never had a nickel to my name until I got out of the White House, and now I’m a millionaire, the most favored person for the Washington Republicans,” Clinton told an audience in Kentucky last fall. “I get a tax cut every year, no matter what our needs are.”
Indeed, the Clintons – who left the White House with an estimated $12 million in legal debts rung up during the Whitewater, campaign fundraising and Monica Lewinsky investigations – are worth an estimated $10 million to $50 million, according to Hillary Clinton’s most recent disclosure form.
The fortune they have amassed gives the Clintons a nest egg for the first time, and it allows them tap into that wealth for a campaign if Hillary Clinton, as expected, forgoes public financing in her race for president.
It also suggests a sometimes close connection between their personal finances and her political career. Many of Bill Clinton’s six-figure speeches have been made to companies whose employees and political action committees have been among Hillary Clinton’s top backers in her Senate campaigns.
Over the past two decades, speaking for money, especially to foreign audiences, has become a common way for ex-presidents to find financial security. Ronald Reagan raised eyebrows collecting $2 million in Japan shortly after he left office in 1989. And former presidents George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter have both traveled extensively to lecture.