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The $100 million couple

Staff Reporter | Posted April 7, 2008 8:40 AM

Senator Hillary Clinton released her family's income tax returns on Friday, which showed that the former first couple has earned at least $109 million since their last full year in the White House.

The figures, provided in 221 pages of personal financial documents, include tax returns for the years 2000 through 2006 and "information regarding their 2007 taxes" as well.

The couple's cumulative total gross income for the period was $109,175,175, which included almost $52 million paid to former President Bill Clinton for speaking engagements.

The next largest sum was $29.6 million paid to Bill Clinton as income for his book. The former president also received $1.2 million for his presidential pension.

For her part, Sen. Clinton received more than $10 million for her memoir, Living History, which included an $8 million advance from the publisher.

The New York senator also received $1,051,606 as her salary from the United States Senate.

" The Clintons have now made public thirty years of tax returns, a record matched by few people in public service," said Jay Carson, a Clinton campaign spokesman, in a statement on the campaign's web site. "None of Hillary Clinton's presidential opponents have revealed anything close to this amount of personal financial information," he said.

Hillary Clinton is trying to appeal to working-class voters for Pennsylvania's April 22 primary, and the campaign appeared to try to downplay the Clinton's wealth by releasing the data on a busy Friday evening, while most of the major news outlets were covering the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Clinton campaign also played down the significance of the $109 million figure by emphasizing the couple's after-tax earnings ($57,157,297) and their charitable contributions.

"What the Clintons' tax returns show is that they paid more than $33,000,000 in federal taxes and donated more than $10,000,000 to charities over the past eight years," said Carson. "They paid taxes and made charitable contributions at a higher rate than taxpayers at their income level," he added.

The release of the documents fueled speculation and questions by some observers, who focused on the source of President Clinton's $52 million in income from speaking engagements.

The Los Angeles Times reported that the Clintons claimed more just for cleaning and maintaining their homes than the $44,000 average family income in Pennsylvania.

The Obama campaign released its own tax returns (click here for PDF file) last month, indicating that the Illinois senator and his wife Michelle made their most income ($1.6 million) in 2005 and just under a million dollars in 2006.

NBC's "Saturday Night Live" spoofed the media's failure to notice the former first couple's wealth with a skit on Saturday evening's broadcast. "We made it hard for them to find out that we were rich by hiding out in our house in Westchester," said the fake Hillary Clinton.

Then the Hillary Clinton imposter offered a joke of her own. "Since it was discovered that Bill and I know how to make money, it has become apparent that I am the wrong choice for millions of Americans who don't seem able to make money," she said. "So I think at this point I think it would be in the best interest of the party for me to step aside for the Obama campaign."

Then, after a beat. "Psych! That's never gonna happen."

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Comments (1)

Rupert
April 7, 2008 3:35 PM

All that money from his "speeches?" Just what could he ever say that would be worth listening to and getting all that money for? Even for free he is totally uninspiring. And, oddly enough like most of the uber rich, the money they donate to "charity" goes to their own foundation, which leaves much to be desired knowing these two as like with everything else, I'm sure they don't disclose who gets anything.

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