Secret Service running out of money to protect Trump

WASHINGTON • The Secret Service said Monday that it has enough money to cover the cost of protecting President Donald Trump and his family through the end of September, but after that the agency will hit a federally mandated cap on salaries and overtime unless Congress intervenes.

If lawmakers don’t lift the cap, about a third of the agency’s agents would be working overtime without being paid, agency officials said.

“The Secret Service estimates that roughly 1,100 employees will work overtime hours in excess of statutory pay caps during calendar year 2017,” Director Randolph “Tex” Alles said in a statement. “To remedy this ongoing and serious problem, the agency has worked closely with the Department of Homeland Security, the Administration, and the Congress over the past several months to find a legislative solution.”

The spending limits are supposed to last through December, but the cost of protecting the president and the extended first family, who have travelled extensively for business and vacations, has strained the Secret Service, local governments and at least one other federal agency, the Coast Guard.

Presidential travel for Trump and the first lady — who fly to their oceanfront Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., and to their golf club in Bedminster, N.J., on many weekends — has added costs for taxpayers and complications for the government. The Secret Service also must provide protection for Trump’s four adult children.

Alles cited overall increases to his agency’s staff levels, which grew by 800 this year, as a factor driving the extra costs, calling the issue “not one that can be attributed to the current administration’s protection requirements alone.”

He noted that the Secret Service in recent years has frequently received permission from Congress to exceed the overtime and salary cap. This occurred as recently as 2016 during President Barack Obama’s final year in office.

Alles called the agency’s current predicament, first reported by USA Today, “an ongoing issue for nearly a decade due to an overall increase in operational tempo.”

Without question, however, the agency’s workload for security personnel has grown under Trump. The Secret Service now protects 42 people around the clock, 11 more than it did under Obama. The Trump protection number includes 18 members of the president’s family.

Since he took office, the president’s inclination to conduct official business with crowds around him — such as a working dinner he held in February with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Mar-a-Lago with diners nearby — has required protection.

Trump’s sons Eric and Don Jr. travelled this year to the United Arab Emirates for business with their Secret Service details in tow.