Shared Sacrifice: Dozens of White House Aides Owe Back Taxes
Perhaps America's Top "Fairness" Fetishist should get his own house -- The White House -- in order before prattling on about "fair shares" to justify raising taxes on American job creators and small businesses. Surprise:
A new report just out from the Internal Revenue Service reveals that 36 of President Obama's executive office staff owe the country $833,970 in back taxes. These people working for Mr. Fair Share apparently haven't paid any share, let alone their fair share.
Actually, maybe this isn't all that big of a surprise. Two current members of Obama's cabinet faced confirmation hurdles due to tax flaps, including the (outgoing) Treasury Secretary, so why hold lower level staffers to a higher standard? In any case, recent data indicates that working for The One is a pretty lucrative endeavor, historically speaking:
Previous reports have shown how well-paid Obama's White House staff is, with 457 aides pulling down more than $37 million last year. That's up seven workers and nearly $4 million from the Bush administration's last year. Nearly one-third of Obama's aides make more than $100,000 with 21 being paid the top White House salary of $172,200, each.
This delinquency problem isn't confined to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Not by a long shot. Federal workers owe Uncle Sam billions in back taxes:
The IRS' 2010 delinquent tax revelations come as part of a required annual agency report on federal employees' tax compliance. Turns out, an awful lot of folks being paid by taxpayers are not paying their own income taxes. The report finds that thousands of federal employees owe the country more than $3.4 billion in back taxes. That's up 3% in the past year. The tax offenders include employees of the U.S. Senate who help write the laws imposed on everyone else. They owe $2.1 million. Workers in the House of Representatives owe $8.5 million, Department of Education employees owe $4.3 million and over at Homeland Security, 4,697 workers owe about $37 million...
In other words, if we could simply induce government employees (whose salaries are paid by US taxpayers) to cough up what they already owe, that alone would amount to the "savings" equivalent of the president's recent federal streamlining plan. The sad reality is that none of this matters to Democrats. They aren't really the least bit concerned about debt reduction, or even fairness, for that matter. If they had truly seen "inequality" in the tax code as an urgent matter, they could have moved to rectify the problem when they controlled everything in Washington for two full years. Hey, they could have even outlined the plan in, say, a formal budget. Instead, they've racked up nearly $5 Trillion in new debt, and are only now wringing their hands about tax fairness because they're counting on class envy politics to help stave off another shellacking in November. Plus, even as they feign ignorance, Democrats surely know the arithmetic: If the government taxed every single American earning at least $100,000 per annum at a confiscatory 100 percent rate, the resulting revenues wouldn't even retire this year's deficit. That's the deficit, not the $15 Trillion national debt or the tens of trillions we will owe in unfunded liabilities. Democrats look at these numbers, reject all meaningful solutions, and plow ahead with politically-motivated "soak the rich" rhetoric as the republic crumbles. I hope the fleeting power rush is worth it, guys.
UPDATE - Following up on yesterday's post, does Warren Buffett's secretary make mid-six figures, or $60,000, as she claims? Maybe she and her husband file jointly, which could explain the evidence suggesting that her household is quite well off indeed. I'd be curious to see the numbers.
UPDATE II - Hey Democrats, aren't you outraged that an uber-loaded Massachusetts politician paid an outrageously low effective tax rate, and employed numerous (legal) maneuvers to help keep his final bill as low as possible? Can you believe that your opponents might actually nominate this guy for president? Click the links, and soak in the hypocrisy.
Guy Benson is Townhall.com's Political Editor. Follow him on Twitter @guypbenson.
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