Newt Gingrich's Secret Service protection costs $40,000 per day

Not so much a person as an ego with feet.
  Businessweek notes that the supposed fiscal conservative Newt Gingrich is a pretty lavish spender when it comes to other people's money:

His think tank went bankrupt. His campaign is $4.3 million in debt. He doesn't hold a prayer of beating Mitt Romney, something he has all but conceded. And yet since March 6th, the Secret Service has honored his request for protection at a cost to taxpayers of roughly $40,000 a day (or, to translate that into a metric Newt might favor, enough to supply 13,333 people a day with food stamps). [...]

Candidates must meet certain benchmarks earn Secret Service protection. Oddly, though, once protection has been awarded, there is no level of support beneath which it gets revoked. Newt will only stop leeching off taxpayers when Romney becomes the nominee or when he voluntarily gives up his security detail. But the latter option would be an admission that his campaign is hopeless.

We'll see. Rumors have it that Newt may give up if he doesn't do well tonight. In the meantime, however, he wants to play at being president, and that means having Secret Service around to make him look important. And, presumably, to protect him from glitter attacks. And maybe to tell him where to find the cheapest hookers (this is Newt Gingrich we're talking about).

Forty grand a day for protection that I don't think anyone really believes Newt needs, though. That's a lot of money just to prop up the famous Gingrich ego.