President Obama will voluntarily give back 5% of his salary this year to help draw attention to the sacrifice of federal employees who will see their pay go down from being furloughed in the coming weeks thanks to automatic spending cuts, a White House aide told NBC News. …
Secretary of State John Kerry announced Thursday afternoon he’ll be following Obama’s lead and Hagel by donating 5% of his salary …
Cancer clinics across the country have been forced to turn away patients after Medicare cuts took effect on Monday, according to a recent report by The Washington Post. North Shore Hematology Oncology Associates in New York decided that they could no longer afford to see one-third of their 16,000 Medicare patients.
“A lot of us are in disbelief that this is happening,” said Jeff Vacirca, chief executive of those clinics told the Post. “It’s a choice between seeing these patients and staying in business.”
In case it’s not clear, I’m surprised that this isn’t an Onion article because they make it out to be this life-or-death issue, and then they decide to give up 5% of their paychecks. Recall that the President earns a 7-figure income (Google his tax returns, you will not be disappointed), his salary is six-figures which makes this actually less than 5% of his gross income, and John Kerry plus his wife make a billionaire (he is married to a Heinz heiress).
Imagine being a furloughed State Department worker, and you receive word that John Kerry, who is currently worth nearly as much as Mitt Romney (and his wife is worth much more), is taking a 5% pay cut for you… now don’t you feel lucky?
So why stop at 5%? Honestly, why not give up 50%? Or better yet, zero percent.
Given that this is about making a political statement, not targeted high-impact philanthropy, giving nothing probably would have been better than 5%. But if they really wanted to make a statement, then something much more substantial, like 100%, would have been necessary.
The article is on Al Sharpton’s blog (not authored by him), so I am sure it’s not meant to be ironic. This is a borderline sick joke, and I expect it to be made fun of in the usual Internet corners, to no practical purpose.