Did former President George W. Bush refuse to accept the pension benefits for which he is eligible? No, that's not true: A 2016 report from the Congressional Research Service documents Bush accepted pension and benefits. At the time of the report, George W. Bush had already received over eight million dollars in benefits since leaving office. There has been no reporting since then that Bush has refused to accept his pension payments.
The video (archived here) was published on TikTok by @celebritynews82 on June 25, 2025. It was captioned:
Why are the lives of two former presidents#billclinton #georgewbush #foryou #fyp #fypシ #celebrities #usa #tiktok
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Image Source: screenshot of @celebritynews82 TikTok post by Lead Stories.)
This fact check will focus only on the question if George W. Bush is refusing his presidential pension, not the other statements contained in this video.
At the 0:14 and 0:38 second timestamps, the video's narrator claims that Bush:
...refuses to take a pension...
...declined his 219,000 thousand dollar presidential pension, saying, "I don't need taxpayer money."
A Google search (archived here) for the exact quote, "I don't need taxpayer money." with the former president's name, returned only results pointing to duplicate copies of this video comparing Bush and Clinton. There was no reporting from news sources attributing the quote to George W. Bush. Additional searches for phrases ""George W. Bush" AND refuses AND pension" or ""George W. Bush" AND declined AND pension" (archived here and here) return no relevant results.
George W. Bush left office in January of 2009. A report titled, "Former Presidents: Pensions, Office Allowances, and Other Federal Benefits " was published by the Congressional Research Service on March 16, 2016. On page 9 of the .pdf file (archived here) Table 1. containing data from the General Services Administration (GSA) details the FY2015 amounts for the pensions of the living former presidents and Nancy Reagan, as well as the other personal allowances to cover expenses such as travel and office space (pictured below). In the fourth column from the left (highlighted in yellow), the pension of George W. Bush is listed as $214,000.
(Image Source: Screenshot of CRS report by Lead Stories with markup.)
On page 11 of the same report, Table 2. shows the "Total Appropriation of Pensions and Benefits Provided to Former Presidents, Adjusted to FY2015 Dollars " in this chart the combined amount for benefits provided to George W. Bush, from 2009 - 2015 is totaled at $8,308,000.
(Image Source: Screenshot of CRS report by Lead Stories with markup.)
Lead Stories reached out to the Office of George W. Bush and to the U.S. General Services Administration and will update this article if we receive a reply.
