Posted on 03/07/2013 4:41:54 AM PST by LD Jackson
Today's story has to be at least on the borderline of pettiness. The White House announced Tuesday that it would be canceling all tours after this coming Saturday. This announcement came because of the sequester spending cuts that began to take effect on March 1. A lot of people visit the White House every year, so I have no doubt it is being done to shape public opinion. President Obama and his administration is doing their best to let the spending cuts do damage where they will do the most good. That's plain to see for anyone who is paying attention.
What a lot of people probably do not know is how much money the people who direct, coordinate, and oversee White House operations are paid. This includes the director of the White House Visitors Office, Ellie S. Schafer. Not only do they make a lot of money, they also get pay raises. Let's look at the details.
(The Daily Caller) The annual salary for the director of the White House Visitors Office, Ellie S. Schafer, went from $70,000 in 2009 to $100,000 in 2012.I am not writing this to disparage Ms. Schafer. Instead, my intent is to highlight, once again, just how bloated the federal government of the United States has become. She is the Director of the White House Visitors Office. She helps arrange and coordinate visitor tours, the White House Easter egg roll, tee-ball tournaments, and other exciting things for children and families to do on the White House grounds. Her starting salary in 2009 was $70,000. Since that time, she has received a pay increase of over 42%, putting her at $100,000 for 2012. No offense to Ms. Schafer, but doesn't that sound like a pretty good salary for someone in her position?According to annual reports to Congress on White House staff salaries, Schafer was paid $70,000 in 2009, $71,400 in 2010, $80,000 in 2011 and $100,000 in 2012.
Schafer is listed by the White House on each report as the director of the Visitors Office for each year, but was also named a special assistant to the president in 2012. Special assistants to the president are the lowest rung of commissioned White House officers, and enjoy significant perks that lower-level staffers do not, such as mess privileges and better parking.
If that isn't enough bloat for you, take a look at the report on the White House staff for 2012. It gives the names, positions, and salaries of all White House employees, all 468 of them. Of those employees, 138 receive an annual salary of $100,000 or above. I don't have time to run through the calculations, but if they only make $100,000 annually, that's almost $14 million. Many of them make well above the $100,000 threshold. As you can see, the Obama administration pays its employees very well.
If you look at the background of Ellie S. Schafer, it becomes clear she is in her current position because she was with the advance team of the first Obama for President campaign. I don't necessarily have a problem with that and I am relatively sure that this is standard operating procedure for most, if not all Presidents in modern times. Where I move from passing speculation to open criticism is when we see these people being paid six-figure salaries, when much of the rest of America is hurting from lower wages, higher prices, and higher taxes. And all the while, President Obama is going around the country, campaigning against the sequester that has supposedly caused visitor tours of the White House to be shut down, indefinitely. Not only is that hypocritical, it should also be considered unethical. When he starts complaining about spending and waste in our government, he needs to gather his White House staff around him and look in a big mirror.
It must be great to be emperor so you can “buy loyalty” with money confiscated from the peons.
How do you stuff this genie back in the bottle? How do you reduce the pay back to what is market rate? I guess you just reduce it. Where else are people like this going to go? I mean, there isn’t a lot of demand for a skill set of coordinating Easter Egg Rolls and T-ball... I mean full time anyway.
We clearly see that Mr. Obama has been seriously misjudged and an apology is owed to this ‘president’ who could have just as easily been a captain of industry.
He creates jobs in the White Hut that appear to be meaningless, but what do we know? And then he rewards these government employees with large raises that don’t seem to mean anything. There’s surely no merit in these jobs that warrant salary increases: they’re already paid twice as much as a commensurate position outside the walls.
Therein lies the man’s enormous intellect. With raises like these the employee may think, being overpaid, that he should perform even more duties and therein lies the genius in this remarkable president.
Not to mention some damned good lifetime pensions.
I think the House GOP should cancel next year’s ‘State of the Union’ and cut a check with a note to the White House: “here’s a check to help keep the tours open, if you need more funds we’ll look for other ways to cut ...”
Seems like obama is closing the White House to the general public. These tours were self guided.
Watch to see if they are ever reinstated.
The White House Visitors Director, one Ellie S. Schafer, has the look of a “carpet muncher” .... just saying ....
Ellie, the daughter of former Republican North Dakota governor and Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer, joined his Administration two weeks ago.
Actually, Ms. Schafer has been in her current position since 2009.
Exactly. It is no longer the "People's House". It is the "Usurper's Palace"!
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