Many Americans are suffering under the ailing economy — but not those lucky enough to be on President Obama’s executive staff.
Turns out the 454 people on the White House staff were paid a total of $37,121,463 this year.
Yes, that’s 15 fewer staffers and $1.7 million less than taxpayers shelled out for the president’s workforce last year.
But it’s seven bodies more than the White House employed during the last year of George W. Bush’s term — and at a cost of nearly $4 million, or 13%, more.
No wonder the Obama folks tried to bury the news late on a Friday this month: Nearly one in three White House staffers is earning a six-figure salary.
Some 21 — mostly old Chicago cronies — are pulling down the top capped salary of $172,200. (Last fall, it was disclosed that 41 owed $831,000 in back taxes.)
Recession?
Not at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Yet that’s just a taste of some bad — but revealing — numbers streaming out recently about the White House’s performance.
As The Weekly Standard noted, a recent Council of Economic Advisers report claims that the $666 billion stimulus “raised employment relative to what it otherwise would have been by between 2.4 [million] and 3.6 million jobs.”
That means the stimulus package cost taxpayers more than $183,000 per job — and possibly as much as $278,000 per.
The White House argues that this isn’t an accurate way to calculate job creation, given that the $666 billion went to things other than finding people work — like infrastructure and construction materials.
Then again, Obama himself has admitted that a lot of those “shovel-ready” job-creation projects turned out to be no such thing.
Still, there’s one number Team Obama can’t put a positive spin on: unemployment, which was 7.3% when the stimulus was being debated and is now up to 9.1% — a nearly 25% jump.
Maybe Americans might feel less depressed if the Obama folks had managed to bury these numbers.
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