Cost of Secret Service to Taxpayers.

I've often thought about this and just wanted to write it down while I was thinking about it.  

Since 1997 there has been legislation that covers ex presidents for a 10 year period after the finish serving their term.  I don't even want to imagine how much money that costs the US tax payers and I bet if I was more patient I could find out just how much it is.

It occurred to me last November as we were voting for the new President that George Bush and Dick Cheney would be receiving this 'perk' for a long time and I began to wonder... "do I want to pay for that?" The answer was, of course... "NO".

So I had an idea... why don't we vote for presidential protection of the OUT GOING president while we are voting for the new president.  It could be just one more check box we get to select. They already ask us if we want to contribute to campaign funds, why not allow us to have a say in this as well.

Also, think about what it would mean to the way a president does his job.  If they new that after their term that A. "The people were not happy with them" B. "The people voted to NOT pay for their security detail" Something tells me that our elected officials would think twice about the decisions they make while in office it meant that if they did a crap job that they would be handed a DC bus token to leave the white house if they didn't receive enough votes to pay for security.

I don't know, just a thought...

What do you think?