White House Salaries: Who’s Making the Top Paychecks?
EmailABC News' Sunlen Miller reports:
The White House has submitted its annual report to Congress listing the title and salary of every White House office employee.
Twenty-nine-year-old speechwriter Jon Favreau, for example, rakes in the top salary, $172,000, just as much as Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, senior advisors David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett and press secretary Robert Gibbs. New social secretary Julianna Smoot makes $150,000 – more than her predecessor, Desiree Rogers, whose salary last year was $113,000.
The president, by comparison, makes $400,000 a year.
Shortly after taking office, President Obama ordered a pay freeze on senior White House staffers who made $100,000 a year or more — an order officially called the Presidential Memorandum Regarding Pay Freeze. Within his State of the Union address this year, President Obama extended the freeze on the pay for top government officials and added political appointees.
Here’s a link – with a searchable data base by name – of White House employees’ salaries:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/disclosures/annual-records/2010
-Sunlen Miller
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Make no mistake. Let me be clear. That kind of money for this kind of speechwriting is unprecedented. These salaries only prove the recovery is moving in the right direction.
Posted by: Bob | July 2, 2010, 7:39 pm 7:39 pm
So that’s where all the money is.
What a week for the Democrats.
First Democrat Senator Robert Byrd the KKK member dies and the Democrats defend him.
Then Ahmadinejad call out Obama: “Mr. Obama took the power with the slogan of change but the [recent] resolution … means that nothing will happen. [It] is in fact an indication of Obama’s failure to bring change,” Ahmadinejad said.
Then crackpot nutcase Pelosi says that “unemployment benefits actually creates more jobs than any program you can name”. I’m serious that’s what she said.
Then the Democrats reject the GOP counterproposal for unemployment options and then the Democrats go on vacation like the rockafellers tht they are.
Now the white house has some of the highest paid staff in the country in the midst of a recession. Then complain about “CEO bonuses and junkets”.
Posted by: EPU | July 2, 2010, 7:43 pm 7:43 pm
How much does TOTUS make?
Posted by: tjp612 | July 2, 2010, 7:45 pm 7:45 pm
He’s nothing without his speechmaker, aka spinmeister.
Posted by: freedom | July 2, 2010, 7:53 pm 7:53 pm
Then the Democrats reject the GOP counterproposal for unemployment options
EPU | Jul 2, 2010 7:43:51 PM
Yeah, the Republican counterproposal is to gut the most valuable part of the stimulus – the infrastructure spending, which is the bulk of the remaining stimulus money. Or do the Republicans want to gut the second year of tax breaks?
Cute how their base doesn’t even bother to ask what the ‘remaining stimulus’ funds are.
Posted by: jhw539 | July 2, 2010, 8:12 pm 8:12 pm
That’s big bucks in my book.Considering Pres.O’s new net worth is over 5 Million ….it seems to me that he is in that WEALTHY UPPER class of Bankers and Wall Street creeps that he keeps talking about…. What a hypocrite!
Posted by: Op1nion | July 2, 2010, 8:34 pm 8:34 pm
$172,000 to write Obama’s speeches..I’m guessing the media thinks they are worth every “chill up my leg” dollar…
Posted by: cindy | July 2, 2010, 8:35 pm 8:35 pm
That kind of money for this kind of speechwriting is unprecedented.
Bob | Jul 2, 2010 7:39:02 PM
Another blatant lie. It happens to be EXACTLY what President Bush’s lead speechwriter earned in 2008 (Thiessen, Marc A). Do you understand what “salary freeze” means?
Posted by: jhw539 | July 2, 2010, 8:41 pm 8:41 pm
Considering Pres.O’s new net worth is over 5 Million ….it seems to me that he is in that WEALTHY UPPER class of Bankers and Wall Street creeps that he keeps talking about…. What a hypocrite!
Op1nion | Jul 2, 2010 8:34:22 PM
Really? Quote please. And yeah, note that he is firmly and consistently in favor of raising taxes that HE WILL HAVE TO PAY HIMSELF. That is hardly hypocritical by any definition.
(BTW, sadly a $5 million net worth is not in the upper class of wall street wealth, where $5 million was not an unusual single year bonus.)
Posted by: jhw539 | July 2, 2010, 8:43 pm 8:43 pm
ummm…frankly, I don’t give a damn what ‘bush’s’ speechmaker made anymore, that’s hindsight …Obama said he’d be transparent…would go LINE BY LINE on the budget…would be ‘no more’ funding of unneeded services, pork, etc. But we have ‘no change’….just more of the same. We probably need more than a ‘teleprompter’ in charge…
Posted by: push2shove | July 2, 2010, 9:02 pm 9:02 pm
“Another blatant lie. It happens to be EXACTLY what President Bush’s lead speechwriter earned in 2008 (Thiessen, Marc A). Do you understand what “salary freeze” means?”
Yes, but you don’t understand what “satire” is, as the comments were simply a compilation of some of Obama’s favorite cliches into a mock speech by The One. Yet another confirmation that earnest lefties have absolutely no sense of humor…
Read it again but don’t let your lips get tired.
Posted by: Bob | July 2, 2010, 9:04 pm 9:04 pm
ummm…frankly, I don’t give a damn what ‘bush’s’ speechmaker made anymore, that’s hindsight …Obama said he’d be transparent…
push2shove | Jul 2, 2010 9:02:43 PM
How is releasing the Whitehouse salaries (as done by every modern Whitehouse I believe) any commentary on transparency?!? And Obama didn’t give his staff raises – the prior administration did.
Posted by: jhw539 | July 2, 2010, 9:21 pm 9:21 pm
Yes, but you don’t understand what “satire” is
Bob | Jul 2, 2010 9:04:13 PM
Is that what Republicans are calling their lies now? Not surprising – they have been approaching governing as a running joke for a while. Drill baby drill!
Posted by: jhw539 | July 2, 2010, 9:22 pm 9:22 pm
It is good to work in the White House…
I suppose the top salaries are for the Czars…
Brennan rakes in a bunch… his company also works for the Government… any conflict of interest there? News Media???
Posted by: Quo Warranto? | July 2, 2010, 10:42 pm 10:42 pm
His speech writer sucks scissors. ” I will not rest” “make no mistake” “let me be perfectly clear” Only a 29 year would think those those old Nixon lines could be passed off as clever and new.
Posted by: nat turner | July 2, 2010, 10:48 pm 10:48 pm
If you want to know how important Obama’s speechwriters are, watch him try to go off script.
That’s when all the stuttering starts.
He’s totally dependent on them.
Posted by: mick | July 2, 2010, 10:53 pm 10:53 pm
If you want to know how important Obama’s speechwriters are, watch him try to go off script.
mick | Jul 2, 2010 10:53:17 PM
But you can’t watch it on Fox – they actually cut away from Obama’s drubbing of the House Republican Caucus specifically because the fact the President was in clear control of the facts – unprompted – completely destroyed the ‘empty suit’ storyline their viewers hold so dear.
Posted by: jhw539 | July 2, 2010, 11:00 pm 11:00 pm
Someone needs to tell the writers that the magic is gone. After three years of Obama’s speech-reading it just sounds corny, lame, and sappy.
Maybe Obama needs to hire a set manager to bring back those styrofoam Greek columns. How corny was that?
Spending millions on a silly backdrop.
That should have been the first clue that Obama loves to waste money.
Posted by: ollie | July 2, 2010, 11:02 pm 11:02 pm
“If you want to know how important Obama’s speechwriters are, watch him try to go off script”
Like he did at the Republican retreat last January, aptly named since the Republicans and FOX were in full retreat well before the end of this nationally televised event?
Posted by: Skip | July 2, 2010, 11:06 pm 11:06 pm
I suppose the top salaries are for the Czars…
Quo Warranto? | Jul 2, 2010 10:42:33 PM
Why are you so lazy? Or did you actually click through, look at the two top earners, see neither were czars, and decided to play dumb?
Posted by: jhw539 | July 2, 2010, 11:09 pm 11:09 pm
It’s easy to write a speech for Obama.
Start off with how tough he has it, and how much he inherited. Then pat himself on the back with a list of accomplishments.
Next blame the media, Bush, the GOP for any mistakes and his incompetence.
Set up the straw men that are holding him back…
Throw in a few inspirational lines like
“this is our moment, we are the ones we’ve been waiting for, yes we can, hope and change, a righteous wind, blah, blah blah” include some history of America–which Obama usually gets wrong.
At this point most of his speeches all sound the same. More like lectures from a know-it-all.
Posted by: hank | July 2, 2010, 11:20 pm 11:20 pm
Which members of the MSM are on the payroll?
I’m not sure who deserves more credit for putting Obama in the White House the speechwriters or the lapdog media.
Now that the public is starting to tune out Obama’s daily speeches I think the media is the only thing keeping his head above water.
Posted by: kyle | July 2, 2010, 11:31 pm 11:31 pm
“I’m not sure who deserves more credit for putting Obama in the White House the speechwriters or the lapdog media”
I’d give alot of credit to Sarah Palin. After a few of her trademark bobble-headed speeches and a good long look at John McCain and it was all she wrote.
Posted by: Skip | July 2, 2010, 11:37 pm 11:37 pm
Way to go Skip. It makes me laugh. Bush couldnt even do a speech with a teleprompter and say certain words correctly. A teleprompter is used to keep him on point many bright people use them. He has given many speeches without a teleprompter…listen to some of his town hall meetings. No prompter here. At least he is not like Palin false facts about Reagan and the state he went to school in. Maybe a teleprompter could help her. She also made a comment about where they lived before Alaska and the many memories she had about her Dad bowling there. She was four months old when they moved. How many memories does a 4 mo. old child have?
Posted by: talmag | July 2, 2010, 11:39 pm 11:39 pm
@jhw539 like how you carved that line…’bout transparency. but the rest of my post was about ‘accountability’ which there seems to be a deflection of any…what could have been an ‘historical’ presidency is just a shell game…who has the $$ under which cup. & THAT to me is a disgrace, especially when we remember our ‘INDEPENDENCE’ this weekend. It’s slowly slipping away, may we remember why we’re Americans, first!
Posted by: push2shove | July 3, 2010, 12:06 am 12:06 am
like how you carved that line…’bout transparency. but the rest of my post was about ‘accountability’
push2shove | Jul 3, 2010 12:06:32 AM
No, it was a random string of bumperstickers with no apparent relevance to subject matter at hand and dubious at best factual substance.
Posted by: jhw539 | July 3, 2010, 12:21 am 12:21 am
Talmag and others – I’ve debunked the latest smear of Palin on a thread on Media Matters. I am NOT a fan of hers at all, but it’s due to a poorly-written story that it seems like Palin said she remembered stuff from when she was 3 month old. She DID NOT say that. She said that her Dad was a pin setter in Idaho (actually before she was born), and she said that she remembered him later bowling in a league when she was a kid.
Posted by: DellDolly | July 3, 2010, 2:37 am 2:37 am
“Twenty-nine-year-old speechwriter Jon Favreau, for example, rakes in the top salary, $172,000, just as much as Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, senior advisors David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett and press secretary Robert Gibbs. New social secretary Julianna Smoot makes $150,000 – more than her predecessor, Desiree Rogers, whose salary last year was $113,000.
The president, by comparison, makes $400,000 a year.”
.
Every stinkin’ one of them should have their job outsourced to India until the next election. We could save a ton of money and the quality of work would be a heck of a lot better than what we are getting right now.
Posted by: gk | July 3, 2010, 9:51 am 9:51 am
How much does the Teleprompter technician get? He is the real MVP of the White House staff.
Posted by: Nephron | July 3, 2010, 10:47 am 10:47 am
“Twenty-nine-year-old speechwriter Jon Favreau, for example, rakes in the top salary, $172,000″ – ABC News
Pfftttt! There goes my coffee.
Ha ha ha He he he how fitting.
The top pay for the most important job.
Weaving words into creative lies. Spin spin spinning to try and deceive the American People. Good Propaganda doesn’t come cheap and NoBo is an empty shell propped up by words and speeches. Take that away and it all falls down because there is no substance to the man/boy.
Posted by: Noz | July 3, 2010, 12:57 pm 12:57 pm
Obama artificially props up the economy, while the speechwriters and the media artificially prop up Obama.
Posted by: millie | July 3, 2010, 5:07 pm 5:07 pm
How much does Obama’s acting coach get?
Posted by: ollie | July 3, 2010, 5:14 pm 5:14 pm
the reason the speechwriter make so much is that he’s obama’s brain. Teleprompter boy is addicted to other people’s words, for good reason, he usually says something stupid (beer summit, doctor’s making $50K to amputate a leg, etc. etc.) when on his own. Ironically, many liberals actually think he’s smart. He’s certainly bright, but not smart, and certainly not wise. I’ll let the liberals think about this last statement. They probably won’t be able to figure it out.
Posted by: tim william | July 3, 2010, 5:16 pm 5:16 pm
The number of people actually working at the WH is outrageous. The total salaries for the branch, of the government, is outrageous.
Obama is behaving like a Hollywood starlet……..spoiled to death.
Posted by: Rick McDaniel | July 3, 2010, 6:09 pm 6:09 pm