Vice President Joe Biden is a team player in the Obama administration but so far he isn’t playing a certain game being called by the man at the top of the chain of command.
Biden isn’t yet ready to cut his pay by 5 percent as the president has done. He says he’ll do so if his staff is forced to take furloughs mandated by the sequestration budget cuts that took effect at the beginning of the year.
I wish he’d reconsider. Even though he reportedly isn’t nearly as wealthy as President and Mrs. Obama. He still can cut his pay and still bring home a healthy amount of money.
Biden’s net worth is around $230,000, which is roughly equal to his annual salary as vice president.
I’ll digress for a moment and ponder that statistic provided by the Center for Responsive Politics. Biden has served in federal public service since his election to the Senate in 1972; that’s 41 years ago. So many of those folks have managed to enrich themselves on what many of them consider a meager salary. Biden apparently hasn’t done so. Obama is worth between $3 million and $8 million, which is a substantial sum of money, but it pales in comparison to Secretary of State John Kerry’s estimated wealth at $200 million.
Back to the point …
The sequestration is causing sacrifice throughout government. Obama and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel both have committed to surrendering 5 percent of their salaries to honor federal employees forced to reduce their pay by taking those mandated furloughs.
Joe Biden ought to follow suit, given that he’s the No. 2 man in the federal government and, let’s be candid, he’s thinking about running for president yet again in 2016. He does not want to be labeled a greedy skinflint by those who might want to run against him.