Former First Lady Hillary Clinton isn't ashamed of the massive amount of money she and husband Bill Clinton have earned over the last decade through high-paying speaking gigs.
Hitting the speaking circuit was a necessity in order to maintain their lifestyle after Bill's term as the 42nd President of the United States ended, Clinton told ABC's Diane Sawyer in a sit-down interview ahead of the release of her book Hard Choices.
'We came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt,' Clinton said. 'We had no money when we got there, and we struggled to, you know, piece together the resources for mortgages, for houses, for Chelsea's education.'
'You know, it was not easy.'
Former President Clinton and his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, have sent $28,000 worth of household goods back to Washington after questions arose over whether the items were intended as personal gifts or donations to the White House.
“We have been informed that it is being shipped back, and the National Park Service is ready to receive it, take possession of it and take custody of it,” Jim McDaniel, the National Park Service’s liaison to the White House, said Wednesday.
“The property is being returned to government custody until such time that the issues can be resolved. It may well turn out that that property is rightly the personal property of the Clintons.”
Giving Back
After they were criticized for taking $190,000 worth of china, flatware, rugs, televisions, sofas and other gifts with them when they left, the Clintons announced last week that they would pay for $86,000 worth of gifts, or nearly half the amount.
Their latest decision to send back $28,000 in gifts brings to $114,000 the value of items the Clintons have either decided to pay for or return.
McDaniel discussed the matter Wednesday with Betty Monkman, the White House curator, and Gary Walters, the chief usher, or executive manager of the White House.
They were reviewing the gifts the Clintons chose to keep after $28,000 worth of items were found on a list of donations the Park Service received for the 1993 White House redecoration project. The Washington Post this week quoted three people who said that they assumed the furnishings they donated for the project would stay in the White House.
“As a result of questions about the status of certain property donated to the White House during the Clinton administration, the National Park Service will accept the return of the property in question and act as a custodian of such property,” according to a statement released by the Park Service, which administers the White House as a unit of the national park system.
A person familiar with the Clintons’ move out of the White House, who spoke on condition of anonymity, would say only: “They’ve been returned.”
Furniture Movers
While the Clintons’ decision to return these gifts was a way to get out from under this and other criticism surrounding their departure from the White House, the couple provided scant details about the shipment.
Mrs. Clinton’s office referred all questions about the gift return to the former president’s transition office. Transition office workers said the Clintons would make no statement. They referred all questions to the Park Service, which wasn’t exactly sure which gifts were being returned or where they had been kept.
In a statement released Monday, Clinton’s transition office said every item they accepted was identified by the White House gift office as a present to them. They said none of the gifts taken was on a curator’s list of official White House property.
“Gifts did not leave the White House without the approval of the White House usher’s and curator’s offices,” the statement said. “Of course, if the White House now determines that a cataloging error occurred, ... any item in question will be returned.”
Instead of waiting for the issue to be resolved, the Clintons returned the items.
The gifts in question were: A kitchen table and four chairs valued at $3,650 from Lee Ficks of Cincinnati, Ohio; a $1,000 needlepoint rug from David Martinous of Little Rock, Ark.; two sofas, an easy chair and an ottoman worth $19,900 from Steve Mittman of New York; lamps valued at $1,170 from Stuart Shiller of Hialeah, Fla.; and a $2,843 sofa from Brad Noe, a businessman from California.
The gifts were just one of several flaps that followed the Clintons out of the White House:
Lawmakers are questioning Clinton’s desire to rent expensive office space in New York City at government expense. Because of the contention, the former president’s foundation has offered to pay at least $300,000 of an estimated $790,000 annual rent for the office Clinton favors.
Mrs. Clinton, the new senator from New York, has faced questions about the propriety of accepting the gifts in the period between her election and her swearing-in. Senate rules would have limited what she could accept had she been a senator.
Members of both parties also have criticized Clinton for granting scores of eleventh-hour clemency requests, including the pardon of Marc Rich, a fugitive in Switzerland from 51 counts in the United States of tax evasion and fraud.
Here we go with a week of the Hildebeest to celebrate her new book.
They had room & board paid for for 8-years. Says a lot about how they manage their money. :whistle:
We came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt," Clinton told ABC News8bs8
She is just one of the 'little people', just like us.
She feels our pain...[cough, cough]
8bs8
I seem to recall their signing book deals immediately upon leaving the WH, to the tune of $9 million or so. :shrug:
Bill and Hillary are ordinary people just like you. Sure she scores $200K per speech and he takes home $500K per speech, but that’s just because they were broke and trying to make ends meet.
... Well, there’s “broke,” there’s “dead broke” and then there’s the moral equivalency “broke” of the cognoscenti 1%. The Clinton’s “broke” clearly falls under the latter category and might more accurately be described as “moral bankruptcy.” ...
That leopard isn't going to change its spots...
(http://i1310.photobucket.com/albums/s658/GourmetDan/hill_zpsde4c7665.jpg)
That's pretty damning. Unfortunately, if she runs, that will be buried like a turd in a catbox.
Hillary Clinton backpedals on ‘dead broke’ comments
Sounds fimiliar. Just like she did about being under fire in Iraq. She back pedals so well she can probably moon walk
Hillary Clinton backpedals on ‘dead broke’ comments
Sounds fimiliar. Just like she did about being under fire in Iraq. She back pedals so well she can probably moon walk
I worry a lot about people I know personally
"We came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt. We had no money when we got there and we struggled to, you know, piece together the resources for mortgages for houses, for Chelsea’s education, you know, it was not easy.” — Hillary Clinton to Diane Sawyer
From the archives of the Westchester County Oral History Project, testimony of Hillary Rodham Clinton:
Times was hard back in ’01. I don’t mind saying. Hard. A — what’s that word? Struggle. That ware whut it was. Our time of struggle.
It waren’t just the lumbago keepin’ me up so bad I’d have to make myself a poultice of witch hazel and neem bark that was learned to me back in Little Rock by Chelsea’s au pair.
It waren’t just Bill pulling the overnight shift with that slave driver Old Man Burkle which made it so he’d only just be coming home to bed on the private plane right when I had to get up to punch my clock over to the Senate.
’Course Bill was up in the Chappaqua double-wide and I was in the Washington lean-to, but I can’t offend the Lord, I allus knew where Bill was on account of the LoJack I had put in him back in ’98.
I didn’t mind we wasn’t together. I reckoned he liked it up there in Westchester because of the special coffee they had there in that place, whatever it was, Starbucks I think it was called — he said you just couldn’t get it anywhere else that tasted the same.
Still, it was lonely for Bill, him there with no one to talk to but the five Secret Service agents and the stews on Old Man Burkle’s Gulfstream. He was sacrificin’, and I knowed it, and he knowed it too.
Also we had to have a place to keep my carpet bag.
Meantimes, I had to be down in DC for to do my piece tendin’ to the young’uns of New York state. Their folks had done the choosin’ of me back to Election Day and dadgum if I waren’t gonna do my all for them kids.
But that was where the strugglin’ come in, you see. It was them two places, the double-wide and the lean-to. Meantime, Chelsea needed the educating, and that school of hers, Stanford, wouldn’t accept our prize pig in trade for the spring tuition.
We was sore beset. Nights I’d take to sobbin’ over the candle starin’ at the ledger, tryin’ to figure out how to make ends meet. Bill had to go vegan cause we couldn’t even afford the jerky.
I mean, what with the presidential pension, the Arkansas governor’s pension, my paycheck from the gummint, add ’em up and that’s only 400K. I mean, thank the Lord for the Medicaid! I was fixing to apply for the Earned Income Tax Credit, was what I was gonna do.
Some clucked their tongues and said I got me a $8 million advance for my book just before we loaded up the truck and skedaddled out’a the White House. Them people don’t know nothin’.
Firstways, you don’t get the whole eight up front, you only get 2 million of the 8 million, and then your agent skims 200K offa the top a that, so you’re basically left with squat. Chicken feed that ain’t no good even for the chickens.
It waren’t until August 2001 that Bill made his book deal. Yes, it was a big’un, but we didn’t know he was gonna get a $15 million advance! We figgered $20,000 tops.
Even now it’s painin’ me to recall it — the same way it pained me the day I told Diane Sawyer we was “dead broke.”
Diane done paid for it later.
(http://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bpy4hGnCcAASrNl.jpg)