The Most Generous Goodbye in Presidential History
Joe Biden will be living large for the rest of his life—and you're paying for it.
If there were an Oscars-style ceremony for presidential achievements—the kind with dramatic envelopes, awkward clapping, and a stage manager aggressively watching the clock—former President Joe Biden would be having a yuge night.
He’d easily take home Worst Foreign Policy Exit for the Afghanistan withdrawal so catastrophic it managed to unite cable news panels, veterans’ groups, and international adversaries in collective horror. He’d be a shoo-in for Most Illegal Border Crossings on Record, a title he wouldn’t just win but dominate so thoroughly it barely qualifies as competitive. He’d lock down Worst Inflation Spike in a Generation for turning groceries into a luxury item and gas stations into anxiety disorder centers. And he’d sweep the category they had to invent just for him: Most Appalling Retirement Package Ever Quietly Handed to a “Man of the People.”
After more than half a century in public office, Biden is poised to collect roughly $417,000 a year in taxpayer-funded pensions—a sum that exceeds the salary of the presidency itself. (I’d gladly pay more for him to not be president than to be president, but still.) Not through a single benefit, but by stacking multiple government retirement systems into one very comfortable payout. It’s legal. It’s contractual. It’s the priciest participation trophy known to man. And it’s being paid for, of course, by you.
And guess what? Your generosity doesn’t stop there.
The General Services Administration has budgeted another (more than) $1.5 million a year for Biden’s post-presidency support. A year! Every year! Of that, $727,000 is earmarked for office space alone. Not staff. Not security. Not travel. Just the privilege of maintaining a taxpayer-funded workplace indefinitely.
Here’s the fun part: there is no cap.
As National Taxpayer Union Foundation Vice President Demian Brady explained, there’s no limit on the rent, no ceiling on square footage, and no restriction on location. That office could be in a high-density, high-rent area—Washington, New York, Honolulu, wherever prestige and price align—and taxpayers are on the hook. For life.
It’s not a transition office. It’s not a temporary courtesy. It’s a permanent entitlement. A monument, really, to the idea that public service never truly ends—at least not for the public footing the bill.
The irony doing most of the work here is that for decades, Biden presented himself as Scranton Joe—Amtrak commuter, lunch-pail Democrat, “the poorest man in Congress,” a regular dude who understood working people because he was one. He spoke endlessly about dignity, decency, and shared sacrifice. He warned about excess, inequality, and systems that reward insiders at everyone else’s expense. And then, upon leaving office, he landed the most insider-friendly retirement package in presidential history.
What makes it all especially awkward is that Biden’s political bookend did the exact opposite. Donald Trump donated his entire presidential salary while in office. He declined the softer, quieter perks former presidents typically slide into—no taxpayer-supported institute, no publicly funded legacy project, no government-backed post-presidency platform. You can argue about his motives, his mouth, or his taste in décor—but financially, he’s treated the presidency like a volunteer position with (mandatory) Secret Service perks. Biden treated it like the final, fully vested tier of a benefits ladder he’d been climbing since the Nixon administration.
And here’s the thing that really sticks in this old gal’s craw: this isn’t corruption. It’s worse than that. It’s business as usual.
Forget the gold watch or the fancy cufflinks. Thanks to the Former Presidents Act of 1958, this is what the system does for officials who run out the clock. Not the ones who succeed. Not the ones who deliver results. The ones who make it out alive. The application form doesn’t ask whether voters were happy. It doesn’t care if you delivered on your promises. It doesn’t analyze whether your policies worked. It doesn’t calculate whether the country is better off for your service or how many Americans suffered or succeeded under your watch. It asks one question only: Did you not die*?
(*Or get impeached and convicted)
And if the answer is yes, the country has your back—bankrolling your pension, your office, your staff, your space, your printer paper, toner, and postage—forever. Long after the lawn signs have been recycled. Long after the gaffes have been forgotten. Long after the “man of the people” rhetoric has been replaced by a very expensive line item in a federal budget.
Various efforts to curtail these funds have been floated over the years and, with remarkable consistency, gone absolutely nowhere. Caps have been proposed. Time limits suggested. Reforms nodded at solemnly and then stuffed into a file folder labeled Later. (In 2016, congressional Republicans pushed a bill that would have put limits on the budgets of former presidents. Obama, who was wrapping up a second term, vetoed it.) My personal favorite—tying post-presidency benefits to approval ratings—has never gained traction, presumably because it would introduce an unfamiliar concept into Washington: consequences.
Instead, the system soldiers on, impervious to optics or outcomes. You can leave office beloved, despised, or politely tolerated like a neighbor who borrows and never returns your leaf blower, and the benefits don’t budge. Same office. Same staff. Same rent checks clearing on schedule. It’s not a bug; it’s a feature. Another quietly messed-up government program that runs flawlessly in the one area bureaucracy always seems to master—making sure the money never stops flowing upward.
The shock isn’t that Joe Biden gets a lavish retirement package—because of course he does—but that the reward for cataclysmic failure is the largest exit package on record. It’s like the Oscars closing the night with a Worst Picture category and then giving it the longest, loudest standing ovation. Where’s DOGE when you need it? Because if there were ever a system ripe for trimming, auditing, or at least asking “wait, why are we still paying for this guy’s staples?”—this would be it.
What do you think?
P.S. ICYMI and while we’re on the subject of goodbyes, in other, brighter news, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has announced his abrupt decision to drop out of the race for a third term. Not because of the mounting fraud scandals, surely. Or the DHS and FBI investigations. Or the “unsubstantiated conspiracy theories” linking him to a few high-profile murders. No, it’s because he simply can’t give the campaign his all—what with Donald Trump hell-bent on making his home state a colder, meaner place. (The irony cup overfloweth! In May, Walz called on Democrats in South Carolina to stand up to Trump, saying, “Maybe it's time for us to be a little meaner.”) According to countless outlets, Walz continues to believe he would have won if he stayed in the race. Bless his heart. I’m sure he does.
But how can we tell if he's dead or alive? Which brings to mind another question: how long will his grifting family hide his death in order to keep collecting?
The absolute scale of the money our governments pay is coming into focus now.
Billions is a rounding error - these people have firehoses everywhere, spewing cash to everyone/everything.
With apparently very little checks/balances to ensure it's being spent correctly.
Flabbergasting.