Republican President-elect Donald Trump announced on “60 Minutes” Sunday that he would refuse his $400,000 annual presidential salary, and would take just $1 instead.
The wealthy businessman turned president’s statement caused some consternation from a few pundits who claim that it’s dangerous for a president to refuse compensation.
The Atlantic published an op-ed claiming that Trump’s move bucked “historical and constitutional precedents.”
Politicians’ salaries have occasionally been an explosive issue in American politics, but these debates usually revolve around pay raises rather than a rejection of compensation.
As a Heritage Foundation memo indicated, when Congress passed its first pay increase in 1816, “furious voters replaced nearly two-thirds of the House of Representatives.” The next Congress repealed the hated law.
To avoid the problem of congressmen voting to raise their own salaries, the 27th Amendment to the Constitution was passed in 1992 using a proposal that Founding Father James Madison wanted to include in the original Bill of Rights.
The amendment states: “No law, varying the compensation for the services of the senators and representatives, shall take effect, until an election of representatives shall have intervened.”
The American people tend to dislike the idea of public service as a money-making scheme. So, is it outlandish that Trump thinks he shouldn’t get paid?
As The Atlantic rightly stated, George Washington initially refused compensation when he was elected president of the United States.
Washington was an independently wealthy plantation owner, and the indispensable man of the Revolution did not need to rely on a public income. Washington made it clear he didn’t want the American people to think he was trying to get rich at their expense.
In his inaugural address, Washington stated that he would “renounce pecuniary compensation” as president and assured Americans that he didn’t take the job with the desire to make more money.
This was in line with his service leading the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War. During the war, Washington only accepted enough payment to cover his expenses.
However, some Founders thought that it could be dangerous for a president to serve without pay and worried that a chief executive without compensation could be tempted by corruption.
As Rob Goodman noted in Politico, Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist 73 laid out that a fixed presidential salary set by Congress ensures the chief executive “can neither weaken his fortitude by operating on his necessities, nor corrupt his integrity by appealing to his avarice.”
Congress turned down Washington’s idea to refuse payment, so our first president accepted its terms.
While it is a good idea for Americans to pay the president a reasonable salary, there is no need for outrage at one who personally wishes to turn most or all of it down.
Herbert Hoover and John F. Kennedy also balked at their salaries and donated them to charity. And current President Barack Obama claimed to take a small, self-imposed pay cut to demonstrate solidarity with furloughed public employees in 2013.
Trump didn’t call for the abolishment of presidential salaries, but merely stated that he didn’t want his. This is certainly in line with his populist appeal, though the money is a drop in the bucket compared to the federal budget.
For a man who goes into office with a substantial fortune, the acceptance or refusal of public payment is unlikely to be the source of corrupting temptations.
