Cha-ching!
Clinton surpasses $75 million in speech income after lucrative 2010By: CNN Political Research Director Robert Yoon
Washington (CNN) - Former president Bill Clinton enjoyed his most lucrative year ever on the speaking circuit in 2010, capping a decade of paid speaking events that has earned him $75.6 million since leaving office in 2001, according to a CNN analysis of federal financial records.
Clinton received $10.7 million for 52 paid speaking engagements last year, a sizable increase from the 36 paid speeches he delivered in 2009 for a total of $7.5 million. The most the former president had previously earned in one year was in 2006 when he earned $10.2 million for 57 events. His 2010 speaking fees were detailed in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's annual financial disclosure report released Monday.
Almost half of the former president's speech earnings last year, $4.8 million, came from 18 speeches delivered in 13 other countries, ranging in distance from Canada and Mexico to India, the Philippines, and South Africa. The remainder was earned in 34 speeches delivered in eight states and the District of Columbia.
In 10 years as a private citizen, Clinton has delivered a total of 417 paid speeches and earned an average of $181,000 per event. Almost two-thirds of his total speech earnings, about $44.9 million, have come from 215 overseas events in 48 countries.
The former president's most popular destination outside of the United States has been Canada, where he has participated in 54 paid events for a total of $9.1 million, followed by the United Kingdom, where he earned $3.2 million for 16 events, and Australia and Mexico, where he delivered 13 speeches apiece for $2.3 million and $2.8 million, respectively.
Within the U.S., Clinton has delivered 54 paid events in New York, 35 in California, 22 in Florida and 15 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Helping to propel the former president to his most lucrative year were two events for which he received a combined $1 million. The first was a June 2010 event in Moscow organized by Renaissance Capital. The other was a December speech delivered in the United Arab Emirates for Novo Nordisk, a global health care company. Clinton received $500,000 for each event, which tie for the second-largest payments he has received for a single event. In June 2008, he received $525,000 for a speech at a motivational speaking conference in Edmonton, Canada.
The former president's annual earnings from speeches have varied from year to year depending on his schedule and availability. He gave only six paid speeches for $875,000 in 2004, when he spent much of the year writing his memoirs and recovering from heart bypass surgery.
His $10.7 million haul from 2010 almost doubles the $5.7 million he earned in 2008, when he spent half the year campaigning for his wife's unsuccessful presidential bid. That year, Hillary Clinton loaned her presidential campaign a total of $13.2 million out of her and her husband's personal funds. The Clintons ended up eating the cost of that loan because the campaign was unable to repay the amount by the deadline required by federal campaign finance laws. However, since Hillary Clinton suspended her presidential campaign on June 7, 2008, her husband has earned $23.0 million in speaking fees for 108 events, more than canceling out the impact of the loan.
Clinton was an elected official on a fixed government salary for all but two years from 1977, when he took office as the Arkansas attorney general, until leaving the White House in January 2001.
"I never had any money until I got out of the White House, you know, but I've done reasonably well since then," said Clinton last year at a forum in Cape Town, South Africa.
Though it is not unusual for former presidents to command millions of dollars in speaking fees after leaving office, Clinton is the only one subjected to strict disclosure requirements as a result of his wife's position as a high-ranking federal official, first as a United States Senator and now as Secretary of State.
When President Obama first nominated then-Sen. Clinton, his former rival, to be the nation's top diplomat in December 2008, the former president agreed to a number of steps to guard against possible conflicts of interest that may arise from his various post-presidential activities. In particular, he has agreed to allow State Department and White House ethics officials to review his slate of proposed speaking engagements.
The Center for Public Integrity, a public interest watchdog group, estimated in May that former president George W. Bush had delivered almost 140 paid speeches for at least $15 million in his two-and-a-half years since leaving the White House. A spokesman for President Bush's office declined to comment on the accuracy of that report.
President Clinton's office did not respond to a request for comment on this article.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/11/clinton-surpasses-75-million-in-speech-income-after-lucrative-2010/
