Economic Winners: White House Staff and Tax Evaders

Last week's economic report was not good. Very few jobs created for Americans, hundreds of thousands of unemployed Americans so discouraged that they stopped looking for a job, very sluggish economic growth, bad news from a major economic leading indicator, and increasing unemployment. Wow, looks like everybody in America is getting socked with the slowing economy and mismanagement of the economy by the political class.

Well, not everybody. Consider some other news out of Washington last week regarding White House staffers that was detailed in the annual White House salary report:

• 75% of the staffers got pay raises from 2009 to 2010 while last week we found out that the average wages of Americans went down in June. This may have been caused by the fact that many companies in the private sector have skipped wage raises for at least the past year or so and some longer.
• The average salary raise was 8% despite inflation being a fraction of that amount and the Federal deficit reaching all time highs.
• Some White House staffers did not get a raise so if you calculate the increase in salary of only those that received a pay increase, the average increase is about 16%.
• A Human Resources consulting group, Mercer, is projecting that there will only be about a 3% increase in private sector wages this year, a measly increase that includes executive pay raises.
• The special assistant to the President, Matthew Vogel, got a $59,000 raise, an 82% increase, and now earns $130,500 a year. Note that the average U.S. household income is about $60,000 a year, equal to the total pay raise Vogel received.
• Director Of African American media, Kevin Lewis, got an 86% pay hike of $36,000.
• One out of every three White House staffers earn over $100,000 a year.
• President Obama earns $400,000 a year, twice as much as Bill Clinton. This despite the fact that the Obamas are millionaires many times over.

Feel good? Millions of Americans searching for a job, often in vain, and the political class and their staffers continue to increase their self-rewards. But let's not stop here. Consider an article in this month's AARP magazine:

• At least 3,700 businesses who received funding from Obama's economic stimulus package were delinquent in paying their taxes at the time that the government gave them taxpayer money.
• The total value of these unpaid taxes was over $750 million or about $200,000 per delinquent business.
• The article states that this $750 million estimate is probably understated since it covers only those businesses that actually have filed tax returns recently. Other businesses, who received stimulus money and who have not filed tax returns at all, indicating that they also owe back taxes, is not included in the $750 million.
• The companies that were involved in the stimulus spending and who owe back taxes received $24 billion under the stimulus spending umbrella, about $200 in waste per every American family.
• The pathetic thing about the whole situation is that why these businesses are guilty of tax evasion they are not guilty of anything else since it is not against the law to receive Federal taxpayer money even if you are delinquent on your taxes.

Let's see, what is the best way to survive an economic downturn? First option, get a job in the White House where generous raises seem to be the norm despite the economic hardships of ordinary Americans and the empty promise from the President that he was freezing all Federal salaries. Second option, be a double winner in a down economy by first not paying your fair share of taxes and then getting money from the Federal government to waste under the economic stimulus program.

Truly, truly a "let them eat cake" moment from the political class. A couple of steps from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" seem appropriate here. First, Step 1 would reduce Federal government spending by 10% a year for five years to get out-of-control government spending under control. This would include the White House staff, you cannot reduce spending 10% a year for five years if you constantly give out raises of 8-16% a year.

Step 34 would hold all members of Congressional committees accountable for the parts of the government they oversee, removing Congressional people from their committee posts for mismanagement. Thus, any Congressional committee that oversaw the economic stimulus program and took no action to stop tax evaders from getting taxpayer economic stimulus funding would be removed from their committee posts for incompetence.

Ashleigh Brilliant once said: "I either want less corruption or more of a chance to participate in it." The country would be better off if there was less corruption since if everyone got involved, there probably would not be enough corruption to go around. Better to go back to a government environment of integrity and honesty and maybe a little humility in order to unite the country rather than divide it along "I got mine" types vs. "I got screwed" types.






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