“Fair share” is this President’s favorite phrase. We hear it repeated in every speech; over, and over, and over again. It’s repeated so often that Obama’s teleprompter abbreviates it with a two-letter “FS” designation and he’s still able to remember what it stands for. Obama’s self-selected executive staff members have been rewarded with juicy taxpayer-funded salaries of up to $172,000 a year while they color his “fair share” playbook with a red pen. While scribbling across his “pie-in-the-sky” rhetoric they wave their middle fingers at the middle class, at the IRS and at the preacher himself.
A new report released yesterday by the IRS revealed that 36 of President Obama’s executive staff members owe the IRS more than $833,970 in back taxes. LATimes.com reported in July, 2011 that, despite the recession being suffered by most of the country, Obama’s 454 White House aides made more than $37,121,463. At the time the unemployment rate in the country was 9.1%. The total earnings for White House staff were up nearly $4 million from 2008, Bush’s last year in office. One in three made more than $100,000 a year and 21 made the top-dollar salary of $172,000.
If that’s not enough to get your blood boiling, wtop.com reported that the IRS discovered that over $3.4 billion in unpaid taxes is owed by “active and retired federal employees and military personnel.” Postal workers owe more than $270 million in back taxes and Senate and House employees owe more than $10 million.
The sad fact is that only IRS employees can be fired for not paying their taxes. New legislation is now being considered by the House and the Senate as these shocking disclosures have hit the news wires. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) has sponsored the Federal Employee Tax Accountability Act of 2011 (H.R. 828). A similar bill (S. 376) was introduced in the Senate last year by Tom Coburn (R-OK). Both bills are languishing in committees since last year’s disclosures were made public. It is hoped that the report released yesterday will stimulate new action on the bills.
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner had to pay $42,000 in back taxes before he was able to accept his appointment, but Geitner’s department has 1,181 employees who owe more than $9 million in back taxes. The Department of Justice has 2,069 employees who owe “nearly $17 million in back taxes.” Perhaps Eric Holder missed those emails and reports while he was busy covering up his ‘Fast and Furious’ involvement.
As ordinary American citizens struggle to pay their mortgages and their “fair share” of taxes, we should ignore Obama’s class warfare rhetoric. President Obama cannot sit in his lofty Oval Office and preach to us about each of us paying our “fair share” while he is surrounded by a bunch of self-selected thieving tax cheats who are paid handsomely by American taxpayers. Our “transparent” President does nothing to correct the situation. His spending has bathed this country in red ink while his staff scribbles more red ink across his “fair share” playbook.
Every time you hear “fair share’’ flow so smoothly from this President’s slippery lips a picture of his staff giving him, giving you, and giving me the red middle finger should flash across our monitors as our well-earned fair shares continue to disintegrate.
“Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.”
—Herbert Hoover
. . . his failure to act upon his flowery words have shot too many holes in the social “idealism” of which he so proudly speaks!
“Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.”
—Plato
