Obama Pay Cut Criticized By Liberal Supporters

The Obama pay cut has been called “insulting” and “feeble” by two prominent liberal media supporters.

President Barack Obama’s voluntary five percent cut in annual salary — money that he is returning to the US Treasury — amounts to $20,000. It comes in the wake of all the sky-is-falling rhetoric as a result of the automatic sequester-driven budget cuts — which only amount to a tiny two percent of the rate of growth in federal spending. The sequester does not address the systemic runaway spending in Washington including massive amounts of waste and fraud in the huge government bureaucratic machinery and also the dependency created by both corporate and individual welfare.

The cancellation of public White House tours was a form of political collateral damage supposedly attributable to the sequester. Releasing from custody hundreds of illegal aliens was another.

As Inquisitr writer Patrick Frye has separately observed, “The Obama sequester overreaction with scare tactics intended to sway public opinion is merely political theater that can only be classified as fear mongering.”

Meanwhile, unlike most Americans, Obama lives rent free and doesn’t have to pay for food or gasoline. And the president continues to party with celebrities and other one-percenters at the White House like its 2009. As The Inquisitrpreviously reported, taxpayers spent $1.4 billion in 2011 on staffing, housing, flying, and entertaining President Obama and his family according to some estimates.

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, generally an Obama supporter as are most of the journalists at that newspaper, drew a distinction between the furloughs ordinary federal workers might face and the president’s highly publicized pay cut:

“The president makes $400,000 a year. In addition, he is provided living quarters on Pennsylvania Avenue, several limos, a very nice (Rose) garden, an (Oval) office and some very nice bedrooms, one named for a former occupant, the late President Lincoln. The president also gets a $50,000 expense account and an additional $100,000 for travel …

” … But wait: This president is independently rich. He is rich by dint of his own talent and industry, but rich is rich –- and you probably ain’t. Obama has made a small fortune in book royalties, and last year the president and Michelle Obama reported an adjusted gross income of $789,674 … So the $20,000 Obama is kicking back to the Treasury is a pittance that will not be missed … But his taking a wee haircut on his salary is just a PR stunt from the White House that’s more insulting than it is empathetic.”

Dana Milbank, Cohen’s Post ideological colleague, also addressed the overly symbolic nature of the Obama pay cut especially given that Obama will become “filthy rich” in his post-presidential years from speaking engagements, books, and other activities: “The [pay cut] gesture, matched by several Cabinet members, was meant to be roughly the same percentage by which domestic agencies are being cut. But the amount — $20,000 of his $400,000 salary — is so little for a man made wealthy by his political fame that it comes across as patronizing … For a man worth millions and soon to be worth tens of millions of dollars, $20,000 is not much of a sacrifice.”

” .. During World Wars I and II, there were ‘dollar-a-year men’ who left lucrative private-sector careers to serve their country in Washington. If Obama really wants to share in the furloughed workers’ ‘sacrifice,’ he should follow that honorable example and give back all but a dollar of his $400,000 salary. When he leaves office, he’ll be able to earn it back with a couple days’ work.”

Given civil service protections and benefits, federal employees are generally in much better financial shape than many workers in the private sector who may no longer have jobs at all. That being said, do you think Barack Obama understands how difficult it is for the average American family to make ends meet in this economy?