{"id":388,"date":"2013-04-04T20:11:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-04T20:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2013\/04\/04\/pressure-builds-on-others-to-pay-it-back"},"modified":"2013-04-04T20:11:00","modified_gmt":"2013-04-04T20:11:00","slug":"pressure-builds-on-others-to-pay-it-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=388","title":{"rendered":"Pressure builds on others to pay it back"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>President Obama\u2019s decision to give back 5 percent of his annual salary apparently is having an effect on other senior government officials and, oh yes, on members of Congress.<\/p>\n<p>Obama earns 400 grand a year. The White House announced the president plans to write a check to the Treasury for $20,000, which covers the amount of money he will return to honor federal employees who are being forced to take furloughs because of the mandated \u201csequestration\u201d budget cuts that took effect at the beginning of the year.<\/p>\n<p>I noted in an earlier blog post that the 5 percent cut is reasonable and it would bring heat on others to follow suit. The word now is that pressure is building on many fronts.<\/p>\n<p>Senior executive branch officials are being pressured to take the cut. So are members of Congress, many of whom have talked for years about the \u201cfrills\u201d and \u201cexcesses\u201d of government spending. And just as the president doesn\u2019t need his salary on which to support himself and his family, many members of the House of Representatives and the Senate are comfortable enough to avoid dependence on their government salary.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t know the details of his wealth, but it\u2019s been said for years that U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Clarendon, doesn\u2019t lack for financial wherewithal outside of his congressional salary. I\u2019m wondering if Thornberry will follow suit \u2013 Obama critic and fiscal conservative that he is.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Obama\u2019s decision to give back 5 percent of his annual salary apparently is having an effect on other senior government officials and, oh yes, on members of Congress. Obama earns 400 grand a year. The White House announced the president plans to write a check to the Treasury for $20,000, which covers the amount &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=388\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Pressure builds on others to pay it back<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}