“The National Journal is up with a list of who makes what at the White House. The employees at the top of the pay scale — the Karl Roves and Josh Boltens and Dan Bartletts and Stephen Hadleys of the world — just got a $4,200 cost-of-living raise, taking their salaries to $162,500 each. The folks at the bottom of the pay scale? They make $30,000, and they appear not to have received any kind of cost-of-living raise this year.” ⇒
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4 Comments so far. Leave a comment below.I want Stuart Baker’s job. He makes $106,641 as the “Director of Lessons Learned”. Seriously. The Director of Lessons Learned. For the Bush administration. No. Really!
Snark aside, has anyone compared this with a reasonable control group, say, Democratic legislators on Capitol Hill? Those at the bottom of the heap in Washington are often working their way up the ladder and don’t get very regular pay increases. Certainly that was the way of the world when I worked there, and the habit of underpaying underlings (who were working main for contacts/resumebuilding anyway) was a depressingly regular but thoroughly bipartisan affair.
Heck, it wasn’t until the Republicans took over in 1994 that Congressional staffers had to be paid minimum wage . . . .
No doubt the inequities are bipartisan. But I gotta agree w/Dave! here—Bush’s “Director of Lessons Learned” has so not earned a six-figure salary.
Compared to other really big salaries, salaries of $100k/year or even $160k/year (Rove) aren’t that great, but compared to what the average American makes? Different story. People making more than $100k simply can’t have a clue how people who make $10k/year or even $20k/year see the world.
But sure, this sort of inequity has existed since the founding of the country, regardless of what party was in power…
Don’t miss the followup: