The House Oversight Committee has unanimously voted for a measure that would roll back allowances for presidents after they leave office,
The Washington Post reported.
The legislation would cap a former president's lifetime federal benefits at $200,000 and give him another $200,000 as an annual allowance. But for every dollar a president earns over $400,000, the allowance would be reduced by the same amount.
The Post said that with all the focus on the Clintons' income recently, "this bill might as well be called the 'Clinton Cash' Act."
According to the Post, former President Bill Clinton received $950,000 from the federal government last year for office space.
"If this bill was law, Clinton, who made around $9.7 million in speaking and book royalties in 2014, wouldn't get any allowance at all," the Post said.
By one estimate,
Clinton has earned $104.9 million since he left office, derived from 542 speeches.
Clinton told NBC recently that he had no regrets about giving high-priced speeches despite his high net worth. "I gotta pay our bills," he said.
Supporters of the measure say that today's ex-presidents do not find themselves in financial need.
"No current former President has claimed publically [sic] to have significantly financial concerns," said a Congressional Research Service report from April 2014, according to the Post.
Last week, Iowa GOP Sen. Joni Ernst pledged to introduce a similar bill in the Senate.
"I believe our American taxpayers shouldn't be subsidizing these extra efforts for their office space to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars … when those gentlemen can make the money themselves to provide for those types of situations in one single speech," she said, according to the Post.
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