Online: | |
Visits: | |
Stories: |
Story Views | |
Now: | |
Last Hour: | |
Last 24 Hours: | |
Total: |
Hillary Clinton claims she wants to be the “champion” of everyday Americans. She says she can relate to their problems because she wasn’t always a member of the top 1 percent of wage earners in America. The Republican Party has put out a chart to illustrate just how relatable her salary is to those of everyday Americans.
Clinton famously said that she and Bill were “dead broke” when they left the White House in 2001, even as they purchased a $1.7 million dollar home in Chappaqua in well-to-do West Chester County, just north of New York City. Oprah featured Bill giving a tour of the home on her show. The median household income in the town was approximately $160,000 in 2014.
Her husband, as a former president, received a substantial pension, more-or-less equivalent (taking into account inflation) to $200,000 per year. Hillary was also sworn in as a U.S. Senator the month Bill left office, earning more-or-less the equivalent of $190,000. Their combined salaries were already over twice the median household income of their neighbors in Chappaqua, much less in America overall, where it is $52,000.
But the Clintons didn’t just have Bill’s pension and Hillary’s salary to make do with; the speaking fees began rolling in almost immediately. The New York Times reports that the Clintons have now earned $125 million in speaking fees since leaving the White House. Their combined income last year, according to a financial disclosure the candidate was required to file, was $30 million.
The report shows that Mrs. Clinton alone received over $5 million last year from her memoir of her time as secretary of state, Hard Choices.
The Washington Post broke down all the income the couple has made from speeches since 2001, including the fee range each received per speech. From January of 2014 to May of 2015, the couple earned $25 million.
Since Clinton has already made income inequality an issue in the campaign, the Republican Party decided to put together a state-by-state chart of just how many household incomes it would take to equal the Clintons’ earnings of $30 million.
In their former home state of Arkansas, it would take the salaries of 501 households to equal that of Bill and Hillary. In their current home state of New York, it would take 371.5. And, in the first primary state of Iowa, the incomes of 364.6 households would be needed to match the former first couple’s.
Image Credit: Republican National Committee – Click here for complete chart.
Bill Clinton was asked earlier this month if he planned to stop taking enormous speaking fees from groups that might create a conflict of interest if his wife should become president, and he said that he would not. The reason why? “I gotta pay the bills,” he responded.
“The Clintons’ claim that staggering amounts of income from paid speaking fees that raise ethical questions and potential conflicts of interest is simply to ‘pay our bills’ shows how out-of-touch they’ve truly become,” said Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus.
This post originally appeared on Western Journalism – Equipping You With The Truth