Ahhhhh....but they are willing to cough up some bucks:
washingtonpost.com
(BTW, my favourite part of the article is:
<<Hillary Clinton said: "I believe the step we are taking today reaffirms that I am fully committed to being the best senator I can possibly be for the people of New York.">>
What a joke.....the step they are taking, IMHO, has NOTHING to do with her being "the best senator" she can "possibly be for the people of New York"...I can't remember them backing down on anything this fast.)
Clintons Will Pay for Half of Gifts
Former First Couple Try to Mend Image
By John F. Harris
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 3, 2001; Page A01
Former president Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) announced yesterday that they will pay for nearly half of the $190,000 in gifts they accepted shortly before he left office, as the former first couple sought to chase away several controversies that have clouded their first weeks out of the White House.
The former president also announced that his private foundation will pay $300,000 annually for an expensive Manhattan office suite that he plans to make his main work quarters, sparing taxpayers about half the cost of offices that were more pricey by far than those of other former presidents.
These announcements came on a day that the former chief executive faced a crowd of reporters on a Manhattan sidewalk to defend his controversial pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich. Clinton said he understood why people might question his action but insisted that the decision made just hours before he left the presidency was "not a political thing."
"On the merits, I don't think it was a wrong decision; I regret all the political flap," Clinton told reporters as he emerged from a meeting aimed at raising money for Indian earthquake relief.
On the gifts, the Clintons announced that they will pay $85,966 of the $190,027 spent on china, furniture and other finery that they had originally planned to accept from friends and supporters. The payments include $7,375 for two coffee tables and two chairs they received from Denise Rich, the ex-wife of the pardoned fugitive who had pleaded on her former spouse's behalf.
When they left the White House last month, the Clintons initially decided to take with them some 190,000 in gifts received over the last eight years. The nearly $86,000 in payments announced yesterday represent the gifts accepted starting in 2000. The only gift from 2000 not being reimbursed is a photograph of Duke Ellington that the Clintons received from filmmaker Ken Burns; the Clintons said they will give the $800 photograph to the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington.
By their action on the gifts, the Clintons are essentially bowing to critics who said it was questionable on grounds of ethics and taste for the Clintons to accept such a bounty at a time when both remain important figures in public life. Public watchdog groups and GOP lawmakers also questioned the propriety of Hillary Clinton accepting a rash of presents just before she joined the Senate and became covered by strict ethics rules that prohibit all but very small gifts.
Officials said the gift payment was handled by political advisers to the New York senator. In the statement released by the Clintons, Hillary Clinton said: "I believe the step we are taking today reaffirms that I am fully committed to being the best senator I can possibly be for the people of New York."
Clinton said, "As have other presidents and their families before us, we received gifts over the course of our eight years in the White House and followed all of the gift rules. While we gave the vast majority of gifts to the National Archives, we reported those gifts that we were keeping. To eliminate even the slightest question, we are taking the step of paying for gifts given to us in 2000."
In combination, the day's events amounted to a coordinated effort to turn back a multitude of controversies that confidants acknowledge caught the Clintons badly off-guard and marred an elaborately planned departure from the White House. For the former first family, it was their first postpresidential effort in damage control, a political art the Clintons were forced to practice often in their White House years.
The pardons, both for Rich and in several other controversial cases, have appeared to be the most serious of the issues surrounding Clinton's exit from power. Congressional inquiries are scheduled.
In Manhattan yesterday afternoon, Clinton emerged from a Park Avenue office tower to greet a full New York-style media throng on the sidewalk. Over cheers and catcalls from passersby, he spoke for several minutes about a pardon decision that critics have called indefensible because Rich fled the country rather than face a court of law and because the prosecutors who worked on his case were apparently not contacted.
But Clinton said he studied the case carefully, though he acknowledged he wished he had had more time, and he said nothing he learned since has caused him to change his mind. He noted that Rich still faces civil actions aimed at recovering millions of dollars in taxes that government officials say he evaded in a series of complex oil transactions in the 1970s.
While some accounts have portrayed Clinton as acting more or less unilaterally after being lobbied by his former counsel, Jack Quinn, he said yesterday he received a full briefing from the Justice Department. In conversations with aides, Clinton has also emphasized that Rich was prosecuted under federal racketeering laws that he said were never applied in similar cases.
He took pains, however, to acknowledge that the case was difficult, and that he could understand why some people were angry. The remarks appeared as much a plea for people to accept his good intentions as they were a defense of the legal merits.
"I just did what I felt was right, and I think on balance it was the right thing to do," he said. Rather than acting for political reasons, Clinton said the politically smart thing to do would have been to avoid all controversy and grant no pardons.
He said he did not want taxpayers to get "gigged" for the high cost of Manhattan real estate. As a former president, he is entitled to office space at public expense, but several lawmakers had already promised a review of the opulent suite he is on the verge of renting on the 56th floor above Carnegie Hall.
Later in the day, Clinton chief of staff Karen Tramontano wrote acting General Services Administration chief Thurman Davis that the "strong economy" has led to increases in real estate prices across the country, pushing up rents not just for Clinton's proposed Carnegie Hall Tower space but also for the offices of former presidents Ronald Reagan, Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter and George Bush.
Tramontano also wrote that because Clinton plans to spend "significant time" at the West 57th Street office pursuing "philanthropic endeavors, including projects on behalf of the Clinton Presidential Foundation," the foundation will pay $300,000 a year toward the cost of the space.
With the $300,000 factored in, Tramontano wrote, "the cost for which GSA will be responsible is comparable to that of former president Reagan's office."
© 2001 The Washington Post Company |
