WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama
plans to give back 5 percent of his pay in a gesture of
solidarity with government workers who must take
unpaid leave as a result of deep spending cuts that
went into effect last month.
The president's self-imposed pay cut would be
effective from March 1, when the spending cuts
began, and would last through the end of December, an
administration official said on Wednesday.
Obama earns $400,000 a year. The official said the
president decided on the 5-percent reduction, which
would total $20,000, because it would be similar to
the level of cuts to non-defense government
agencies.
Defense and non-defense discretionary spending has
shrunk across the board as a result of reductions
under a process known as sequestration. To maintain
critical functions, many agencies are making workers
take unpaid leave, or furloughs.
"The President has decided that to share in the
sacrifice being made by public servants across the
federal government that are affected by the
sequester, he will contribute a portion of his salary
back to the Treasury," White House spokesman Jay
Carney told reporters traveling with the president in
Colorado and California.
The president's gesture comes after the top
Defense Department official said he would return
part of his salary in an amount equal to pay lost by
civilian employees.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will give back the
equivalent of 14 days worth of pay to the government,
about $10,750, his spokesman said on Tuesday.
Obama's decision was first reported by The New
York Times.
Sequestration was originally designed as an outcome
so harsh that budget negotiators would find another
way to narrow trillion-dollar deficits.
However, Obama would not back away from his
insistence that any spending cuts be paid for in part
by higher tax revenues, while Republicans, who had
conceded higher tax rates on the rich in a budget deal
in January, refused to agree to any tax hikes.
The $85 billion in overall cuts went into effect after
the two sides reached impasse.
(Reporting By Mark Felsenthal and Jeff Mason in San
Francisco; Editing by Xavier Briand and Todd
Eastham)


mobile.reuters.com/shortArticle/topNews/idUSBRE93213G20130404?irpc=932

Good leadership in the makingn only wish our so called leaders can emulate this good characters and stop looting dry the more

lookmangiw: Good leadership in the makingn only wish our so called leaders can emulate this good characters and stop looting dry the more

You're extremely naive to fall for such PR stunts from a US govt that has overseen the shifting of trillions of dollars of tax payers' money into the hands of a few favoured bankers and corporate elite, causing widespread suffering in that nation. Why are you guys so gullible? Why don't you take the time to study US politics before turning wide-eyed admirer of everything they do? Damn! Pathetic.

Good leadership in the makingn only wish our so called leaders can emulate this good characters and stop looting dry the more

Rossikk: You're extremely naive to fall for such PR stunts from a US govt that has overseen the shifting of trillions of dollars of tax payers' money into the hands of a few favoured bankers and corporate elite, causing widespread suffering in that nation. Why are you guys so gullible? Why don't you take the time to study US politics before turning wide-eyed admirer of everything they do? Damn! Pathetic.

Dude you are so funny, if you are not defending nigeria against south africa, you are defending nigeria against usa. For christ sake, no matter what positon you or your parent is in nigeria, look deep in ur heart and see if things are really going well as it should. The usa you talking about is 100 million way advance, less corrupt, more civilized,more developed etc im not saying you shld recognise all this but for the fact that obama did something that will take a knife on a nigeria politician throat to do shld be appreciated and not start talking about the 0.00001% corruption compare to ur country

Toaskarity:

Dude you are so funny, if you are not defending nigeria against south africa, you are defending nigeria against usa. For christ sake, no matter what positon you or your parent is in nigeria, look deep in ur heart and see if things are really going well as it should. The usa you talking about is 100 million way advance, less corrupt, more civilized,more developed etc im not saying you shld recognise all this but for the fact that obama did something that will take a knife on a nigeria politician throat to do shld be appreciated and not start talking about the 0.00001% corruption compare to ur country

You call transferring TRILLIONS of dollars into the hands of a few bloated bankers in the face of rising malnutrition rates ''0.00001% corruption''?

http://www.lsuagcenter.com/en/family_home/family/childcare/Children_Childcare/Malnutrition+Impairs+US+Childrens+Health+Behavior+Says+LSU+AgCenter+Food+and+Nutrition+Expert.htm

Your head is obviously too far up the US elite assss to see reason.

How will you know what's going on in America when you're blinded by Hollywood and CNN? Do you know that millions of Americans are homeless, with some sleeping in SEWERS?

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/2651937/The-people-living-in-drains-below-Las-Vegas.html

Unemployment is at an all-time high, and their crime rate is the worst in the world. More civilized? They are not more civilized if they make their money from BOMBING innocent nations to smithereens in order to steal their oil. They're just very good at pretending to be civilized.

And I maintain that anybody swayed by Obama's publicity stunt of 5% 'reduction in salary' even as his corporatist policies lead to greater wealth disparity than ever seen in US history, is a gullible fool. You people need to get off NL and go on some of these US forums, and see how THEY, the American public routinely decode and dismiss these publicity stunts in an instant, while you're here kissing Obama's asss. ''Ooooh.. look at how he reduced his salary... isn't he a saint? Ooooh... If only our leaders were like him....Ooooh''

PATHETIC.



Here's what Americans think:

''Bank of America ... is perhaps the biggest welfare dependent in American history, with the $45 billion in bailout money and the $118 billion in state guarantees it’s received since 2008 representing just the crest of a veritable mountain of federal bailout support, most of it doled out by the Obama administration. (Emphasis added.)

Revealingly, BoA soothed nervous creditors last year by shifting $73 trillion in derivatives to the part of the bank covered by federal deposit insurance — aka the taxpayers. Writes Taibbi,
This move, encouraged by the Obama administration, put the American taxpayer on the hook for an entire generation of irresponsible gambles made by another failed investment firm that should have gone out of business, but was instead acquired by Bank of America with $25 billion in taxpayer help — Merrill Lynch. (Emphasis added.)

This is just one of the many ways in which Obama reveals himself as a friend of big, well-connected business interests — that is, as an advocate of the corporate state.''

http://www.thenewamerican.com/reviews/opinion/item/11115-barack-obama-corporatist


See, this is why many Americans regard Obama's ''5% cut in salary'' as an insulting stunt. THEY GET THE DEAL, while NLers are still taken in by the outward showy deceit.

@topic,

Obama gets a salary of $400,000 per year as President. This is money he never needs to touch because he has an unlimited budget to take care of every need, whim and caprice of the presidency. This is certainly a political stunt to fool the gullible. If he really wants to sacrifice, let him cut down on the vacations or spend them closer to home where the tax payers would be on the hook for less.