Joe Biden charges Secret Service $66,000 in rent for officers protecting him to live in cottage next to his home

Outrage: Joe Biden has charged the Secret Service thousands of dollars to rent a cottage next to his house

Vice-President Joe Biden has charged the Secret Service $13,000 in rent for officers protecting him to live in a cottage that he owns next to his Delaware home, it has been revealed.



Mr Biden has collected the sum in rental payments for the property next to his waterfront home in Wilmington since April according to Federal purchasing documents.



The agency pays $2,200 a month for the house. The U.S. Secret Service will have paid $66,000 in rent for the house by the time the contract expires in fall 2013.



The Secret Service said the close proximity of the property to the Vice-President’s home meant that they could provide a high level of security for him and his family.



But taxpayers’ groups have responded with outrage to the payments.



'He should be afforded every single protection available to him and his family, as should every vice president and president,’ said Leslie Paige, spokesman for Citizens Against Government Waste.

'But this arrangement seems bizarre to me,’ she told the Washington Times.



'You’d think the Vice-President, who shepherded the deficit committee, would think twice about charging the Secret Service rent. Why would he need the money? I don’t get it.’



According to Mr Biden’s office, his mother lived in the cottage until she died in January 2010.



It was rented by a private tenant, but when they moved out the Secret Service approached Mr Biden about renting the property.



'The cottage was an existing rental property at the time the Secret Service signed its lease,’ a spokesman for Mr Biden told the Washington Times.

