New Bill Bans Secret Service from Paying Presidents for Lodging at Private Homes

If you’ve ever had to file an expense report, you know the drill: you can’t bill the company for something you already own or something that looks like self-dealing. The Making Any Reimbursement Against the Law for Guarding Overnight Act, or the MARALAGO Act, applies a similar logic to the highest office. This legislation is straightforward: it bans the U.S. Secret Service from using federal funds to pay the President—or any business the President owns or controls—for lodging, meals, office space, or any other expense incurred while protecting the President at their private residence.

Putting the Brakes on Taxpayer Payments

This bill targets a specific ethical gray area: the potential for a sitting or former President to profit directly from the security detail required by their office. Think of it this way: when the President is at their personal home, the Secret Service needs space to work and sleep. Under current rules, the government might pay the President’s company to rent rooms or office space on the property. This bill (Section 2) shuts that down completely. For taxpayers, this is a clear win for accountability, ensuring that federal funds aren't flowing directly into the private pockets of the person being protected simply because the protection detail has to follow them home.

The Free Lunch Loophole: Gifts Allowed

Here’s where things get interesting and potentially complicated. While the Secret Service is banned from paying the President or their businesses, the bill explicitly allows the President or the business they control to provide these services—like lodging and office space—to the Secret Service free of charge as a gift. So, the President can’t send an invoice, but they can hand over the keys and call it a donation. This provision applies to both the sitting President and any former President (Section 2).

The Real-World Ethics Check

For most people, the idea of getting paid by the government for essential security is a non-starter. This bill fixes that by preventing direct payments. However, the 'gift' provision opens up a different kind of ethical question. If a President is required to provide a multi-million-dollar service (like securing and housing dozens of agents) as a 'gift' to the government, does that create an undue obligation or a perceived benefit? It stops the cash flow from the government to the President, which is good, but it formalizes a situation where the President is essentially subsidizing their own security detail with potentially massive in-kind donations. This is a complex trade-off: we prevent self-dealing, but we introduce a massive, continuous 'gift' from the President to the Executive Branch, which could be seen as an ethical gray area regarding influence or obligation down the line. It's a clear attempt to clean up the books, but the fine print shows that policy fixes often create new wrinkles.