The Secret Service no longer has the funds to pay agents needed to protect President Donald Trump and his large family in their extensive travels, CNN reports.
Trump has traveled frequently to his properties in Florida, New Jersey and Virginia, and his adult children have taken numerous vacations and business trips throughout the United States and overseas, travels for which the law requires the Secret Service to provide protection.
Secret Service Director Randolph Alles told USA Today that unless Congress provides additional funding, he will not even be able to pay agents for the work they have already done, because more than 1,000 agents have already reached the federally mandated caps for salary and overtime allowances that were meant to last the entire year.
Alles said that under Trump, 42 people have protection, including 18 members of his family, which is a significant increase from 31 who had protection during the Obama administration.
CNN recently estimated that Trump is on pace in his first year of office to surpass former President Barack Obama’s spending on travel for his entire eight years.
Overwork and constant travel already has led to many agents leaving the Secret Service, a trend that was already noted in a special investigative panel formed before the Trump presidency which showed troubling attrition rates in large part due to agents working “an unsustainable number of hours,” according to USA Today.
Alles said he expects the pressure will eventually be relieved by the Secret Service’s continued campaign to add agents, but so far the results have been mixed. Although some 800 agents were hired in the past year, those leaving the agency led to a net staffing gain of only about 300.
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