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Vice President Joe Biden is the first official guarded by the U.S. Secret Service to receive rental income as a landlord for the agents who protect him, an agency spokesman said Tuesday.

Biden rents out the cottage for $2,200 a month. Since April, he has collected $13,200 in rent for the cottage next to his Greenville home, federal records show. Biden will get $66,000 from the contract by the time it expires in 2013.

"We've not rented from protectees before," Secret Service spokesman Edwin Donovan said.

Citizens Against Government Waste's Leslie Paige said the Secret Service should do all it can to protect Biden, but one would think the vice president -- who led a committee on debt reduction -- would think twice before charging the Secret Service.

Asked why Biden didn't allow the agents to live in the cottage house for free, Barkoff said, "The cottage was an existing rental property at the time the Secret Service signed its lease."

But Biden didn't register the cottage house as a rental property, as 35,000 other county property owners have done since 2005, Culver said.

The registration program is free, but calls for a $150 fine for those who don't register their rental properties. No one has ever been fined, Culver said. That's because the county issues a warning to violators and they have all signed up for the free registration program rather than be fined for not participating in it.

The program was created to compile an inventory of rental properties so county code officers could inspect them on a regular basis.

Culver said Biden should have registered the property when he first rented it in 2010. And he will have to do so again if a private tenant rents there in the future.

"If the Secret Service moves, and we get a notice that someone else is renting there, we would send him a notice to get it registered," Culver said.

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I read this the other day.  I cant believe that Biden would charge rent to the guys who put their lives on the line to take a bullet for him!  Man...oh man.