Vice President Joe Biden may be able to use his $220,000 annual salary to start paying down as much as $465,000 in debt.
According to a disclosure statement released Friday afternoon by the White House, Biden last year carried between $165,000 and $465,000 in debt, including a line of credit he took out last year worth as much as $50,000.
The White House also posted on its blog copies of President Barack Obama’s 2008 disclosure, which showed that Obama continued reaping big royalties from his two books. Additionally, in the days before he was sworn in, he inked a $500,000 agreement with Random House to publish a children’s version of his best-selling memoir, “Dreams From My Father.”
Biden’s literary career was substantially less lucrative. He reported receiving $9,563 from Random House as an advance to record an audio version of his 2007 campaign book “Promises to Keep.”
He also reported that he earned $20,500 from Widener University in suburban Philadelphia, where he had been an adjunct law professor since 1991, and that his wife, Jill, earned a teaching salary from Delaware Technical and Community College in Wilmington.
He reported that he and his wife held assets in a variety of funds worth between $115,000 and $465,000.
In addition to the 2008 line of credit, which came from Wilmington Savings Fund and carried a 7.5 percent interest rate, Biden reported taking out a “signature note with monthly payments” and a 9.99 percent interest rate in 2007 from the U.S. Senate Federal Credit Union.
That’s on top of a 10-year home equity loan he took out in 2005 at prime that’s worth between $100,000 and $250,000 and a prime-plus-one loan he co-signed for his son in 1989 worth between $50,000 and $100,000.
By contrast, the Obamas did not report any liabilities, though a White House aide pointed out that they are not required to disclose how much they owe on the 30-year mortgage loan they took out in 2005 to buy their 6,500-square-foot Georgian-revival style home in Chicago for $1.65 million.
Obama reported book royalties worth between $1.1 million and $6 million and assets worth between $1.35 million and $5.6 million in various funds and U.S. Treasury bills.
The disclosure forms, which the White House noted traditionally were provided only in hard copy, list broad value ranges for most assets and liabilities, making true net worth difficult to discern.
