OPINION: It's time to retire presidential pensions

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He's the author, most recently, of "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory."

George W. Bush reportedly received a $7 million advance for his presidential memoir, which recently hit stores. The former president is also receiving a $203,600 annual pension from you, the taxpayer. Does anyone see a problem with this picture?

Although retired presidents of past times often needed a government pension, the present is a different story. It's time to retire the presidential pension.

Ironically, the most indebted former presidents didn't get one. Thomas Jefferson was forced to sell his 6,000-volume book collection to the government - forming the core of the Library of Congress - to pay off his creditors. His debt-ridden successor, James Madison, pleaded in vain for a loan from the new Bank of the United States. The next president, James Monroe, was so impoverished upon his death in New York that his family couldn't afford to send his remains back to his native Virginia.

So far as we know, however, none of these ex-presidents sought a pension. With the Revolution against King George still a fresh memory, a lifetime government sinecure smacked too much of royal privilege.

The first ex-president to demand a pension was also one of the least distinguished: Millard Fillmore. "It is a national disgrace that our Presidents should be cast adrift, and perhaps be compelled to keep a corner grocery for subsistence," wrote Fillmore, whose savings were nearly wiped out by the Panic of 1857.

A quarter-century later, when his own nest egg disappeared in a stock fraud, Ulysses S. Grant would pioneer a new form of ex-presidential profit-making: the memoir. Published by Mark Twain (who was also suspected as its ghostwriter), Grant's two-volume memoir was completed just before he died of throat cancer. It earned nearly a half-million dollars in royalties for his cash-strapped family.

Near the end of the 19th century, ex-presidents moved into another lucrative area: corporate boards. Grover Cleveland sat on two of them, in the graft-ridden insurance industry, which earned him lots of bad press along with his big fees. He apparently felt bad about it, too, urging Congress to establish a pension that would obviate such post-presidential money-grubbing.

But pensions for former presidents would not come into law until four decades later, spurred by the plight of Harry Truman. A failed haberdasher and a lousy investor, Truman was so poor upon leaving the White House that he had to move in with his mother-in-law in Missouri. He also bought his train ticket out of Washington by himself, which the public saw as beneath the dignity of an ex-president.

So in 1958, Congress passed the Former Presidents Act. It gave ex-presidents a lifetime pension - pegged to the annual salary of a Cabinet secretary - as well as compensation for travel, staff and other expenses.

But these were also the years that ex-presidents realized huge new financial opportunities. Truman himself got a $670,000 advance for his memoirs, and received a large fee for appearing on Edward R. Murrow's television program "See it Now," becoming the first ex-president to cash in on this new medium.

Since then, ex-presidents have reaped an almost limitless harvest. Memoirs were always a safe bet, earning anywhere from $2.5 million (Richard Nixon) to Bill Clinton (a reported $15 million). So were corporate boards and advising, which Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush exploited to the fullest.

And then there were speaker fees. Nine months after leaving the White House, Ronald Reagan got $2 million for a few talks in Japan. But nobody has come close to Bill Clinton, who took in more than $50 million from speaker fees alone between 2001 and 2007.

So here's the paradox. When presidents really needed a government pension, they didn't get one; and now that they don't, we give it to them.

It's time to take it back. Congress should do away with the pension, once and for all. The current occupant of the White House, Barack Obama, has already earned millions in book royalties; after he leaves, he's sure to make millions more. The rest of us don't need to chip in.