How Trump can ease his Secret Service burden
Duties to first family overwhelm financially strapped Secret Service
The Secret Service can no longer pay its agents who travel with President Trump and his 18-member family. But there are ways Trump can cut the costs.
“I alone can fix it,” Donald Trump declared as he accepted the presidential nomination last summer. When it comes to the serious budget crisis facing the president’s Secret Service, that might actually be true.
As USA TODAY first reported Monday, the Secret Service can no longer pay hundreds of agents, who grapple with protecting a president who spends almost every weekend traveling to properties he owns on the East Coast and the 18-member first family’s frequent business trips and vacations. Director Randolph “Tex” Alles said more than 1,000 agents have hit federally mandated caps on annual salary and overtime allowances meant to last the whole year.
Congress would have to intervene to get these agents paid. Former Secret Service officials and ethics experts said there are simple ways Trump could ease the financial burden on the men and women who protect him.
MORE TIME AT WHITE HOUSE
“That would help solve the problem,” said John Magaw, a former Secret Service director who began his career as an agent under Lyndon Johnson in 1967.
Since his inauguration, Trump has taken seven trips to his estate in Mar-a-Lago, Fla., traveled to his Bedminster, N.J., golf club five times and returned to Trump Tower in Manhattan once. Since Trump has a semi-regular presence at each resort, it’s more costly to keep up the security infrastructure.
Trump properties are expen- sive, and the agency is not allowed to accept any funding or resources that Congress hasn’t appropriated. That would include hotel rooms at Trump-owned properties, said another former Secret Service director, W. Ralph Basham.
Since Trump is unable to toss the Secret Service any freebies, it would be up to him to adjust his travel.
“The president could prevent this problem by changing his behavior,” said Walter Shaub, who was the director of the Office of Government Ethics until last month. “He could stay in town and do some work — and not go off frolicking on golf boondoggles to his own properties.”
Shaub, who joined the office during the George W. Bush administration and was appointed as its chief by Barack Obama in January 2013, resigned after clashes with Trump. Shaub criticized Trump for failing to relinquish ownership of his real estate and commercial enterprises.
CAMP DAVID, NOT RESORTS
Magaw recommended Trump limit his travel to the customary one or two vacations a year, the White House and Camp David, the rural Maryland retreat presidents have frequented since the early 1940s —“and the absolute necessary foreign trips, while this is getting fixed.” That’s what presidents have done to save federal dollars and minimize the stress on federal agents and their families who face long stretches away from spouses and children.
“That really saves money,” Magaw said. The president’s jaunts to Mar-a-Lago cost at least $3 million each, based on a General Accountability Office estimate.
DECLINE PROTECTION
Trump can’t pay for his own Secret Service protection, said Scott Amey, chief counsel at the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight, since it could raise legal issues under the Anti-Deficiency Act. Trump’s immediate family is allowed to decline Secret Service protection.
There is precedent for families declining protection, Basham said. Former first lady Barbara Bush, who was eligible for lifetime coverage, declined protection shortly after leaving the White House.