White House salaries: Whose check is biggest?
By Dave Cook | 07.02.09
In most organizations, the salary list is a tightly guarded secret. But in President Obama’s White House, it is posted on the website.
For the Washington obsessed, the information posted Wednesday afternoon is full of fascinating factoids.
For example, the best known aides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue – Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, senior adviser David Axelrod, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs – are not the best paid. That distinction goes to David Marcozzi, the president’s director of public health policy, who makes $192,934 a year. His home agency is the Department of Health and Human Services and he is a “detailee” at the White House.
The lofty “assistant to” title
After Mr. Marcozzi, the next best paid are National Security Adviser James Jones and 21 who carry the title Assistant to the President. Members of this group – including Messrs Emanuel, Axelrod, Gibbs – make $172,200. That is the same salary as former President Bush’s top aides. Mr. Obama promised to freeze White House salaries above $100,000 when he came into office, paying his top staffers staff at the same level as President Bush in his final year.
Total salary cost comparisons between the Obama and Bush White Houses are difficult, because President Obama has released more information on compensation than his predecessor. He also appears to have a bigger staff than Bush. Hotline’s On Call blog calculates that the Obama administration is spending about $5.1 million more on staff in 2009 than the Bush administration did in 2008.
Working for the love of it
At the low end, two staffers are listed as receiving no pay. They are Michael Warren, a senior adviser for economics in the department of personnel, and Patricia McGinnis, who is listed simply as an adviser. For those who are being paid, the lowest salary is $36,000.
The $172,200 assistant to the president pay level goes to individuals with a wide range of experience, the Washington Post notes. They range in age from 28-year-old Jonathan Favreau, the president’s director of speechwriting to Mr. Jones, a 66-year-old retired general.
It pays to work for the president
And, not surprisingly, who you work for makes a difference in your paycheck. The press secretary to First Lady Michelle Obama is paid $80,000. The press secretary to the President makes $172,200 and Gibbs’s deputies make $113,000.
Many White House workers labor long hours for modest pay in return for the thrill of being where the action is. As Michael Shear writes in the Washington Post’s “44” blog, “The vast bulk of the employees appear to earn between $40,000 and $55,000 per year, making the White House quite a modestly paid enterprise for most of the workaholics who spend time there.”
The president himself makes $400,000. The vice president, $227,300.
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4. rgw | 07.02.09
not so much the salary as to the Benies … Healthcare—-wish I had there’s—FOR LIFE..Retirement benefits…WISH I HAD THAT for working 4yrs…security/cars/plains…..so on…expenses you or I would give our right arm for…
5. Papa | 07.02.09
I wish that we could get rid of the postal service director that make a million for his fine work,we got a postal increase to pay his million a year
6. Jeff | 07.02.09
I thought it was called public service Mr Obama? It seems to be a public payroll of excesses. And what about those CEO’s that were forced out because Mr Obama said they were making too much. The problem with too much is that it only applies to the other person!
7. Judy | 07.02.09
What we need is term limits on Congress as well as all elected officials and an elimination of lifetime retirement & medical benefits for them. They should be participating in the social security & medicare system just like the rest of Americans. Perhaps then they would stop “dipping into those trust funds” and keep them for what they were intended, and learn to “live within the budget” like American families and businesses do.
Limiting the number of terms that all elected officials can serve will not only effect lobbyists and their clients’ ability to “control” our “public servants” and all of the “pork barrel spending” that is going on but it will give the American people more of a say in how their elected officials serve their needs and “fresh thinking” rather than the “life troughers/elitists” that we presently have who think they know better than the people who they have been elected to serve and are enchanted with themselves and the power they have gained.
9. jack akins | 07.02.09
i am glad to see more open documents in the obama administration……have not had that in recent past
11. John | 07.02.09
Top salaries same as in the Bush administration but caliber of staff is not the same. There is a related post at http://iamsoannoyed.com/?p=2024
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Jimmy Orr has worked in politics for the majority of his professional career working for two U.S. Senators, two Governors and one President. Most recently, Orr served as White House Spokesman and Internet Director for President George W. Bush and Special Advisor to Governor Schwarzenegger for Internet Communications.
David Cook is Washington bureau chief of The Christian Science Monitor and host of the Monitor's newsmaker breakfasts. He was the Monitor's editor from 1994 to 2001. Cook is a graduate of Principia College, served in the U.S. Army, was a Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University, and is a member of the Gridiron Club, Washington's oldest journalistic organization.
1. Dutra | 07.02.09
It is totally obscene when you total the perks (allowances); automobile, fuel, clothing, housing, meal expenses, travel expenses, entertainment, overtime, Washington discounts, etc..