No recession for Obama's 454 White House aides: They'll make $37,121,463 this year

In his numerous fund-raising and policy speeches around the country these days, President Obama often bemoans the difficult economic times and uncertainties afflicting millions of Americans, including the nearly 14 million still seeking work unsuccessfully.

The Democrat argues that his administration needs more time to straighten out the economic mess left by somebody else, who's been gone almost 900 days now.

But good news this morning: The challenging Obama era and 9.1% national unemployment rate do not include the 454 people now helping President Obama do presidential things.

This crowd is being paid a total of $37,121,463 this year. That's up seven staff members and nearly $4 million from 2008, the last year of George W. Bush's presidency.

Fully 141 Obama aides -- or nearly one-in-three -- earn more than $100,000 a year. That's also up from the 130 with that scale salary in Bush's last year.

Twenty-one Obama aides earn the top-dollar $172,200.

The staff names and salaries report, required annually by Congress, was released on Friday by the White House. The timing, however, was probably an accident because last Friday most Americans were not watching the news closely and were thinking of not working for a three-day holiday weekend.

Because Americans would no doubt be pleased to know of the Obama staff's economic success amid the bleak national scene for so many others, we saved the information for today, when most Americans who are still employed are back at their own jobs and can share the joy.

The 2011 White House salary report does not include mention of the 41 unidentified Obama staff members who owe the Internal Revenue Service $831,000 in back taxes. That report came out last fall (Scroll down for the link.)

The report comes as Republicans and Democrats, led from behind by Obama, appear stalemated in closed-door negotiations over a package deal to raise the national debt limit by Aug. 2 and begin spending cuts to tame the $14.2-trillion national debt, up 35% since Obama's inauguration. Obama maintains a deal must include new revenues to cover the rising costs of government.

Having Chicago connections appears to be useful for obtaining the maximum $172,200 salary from the Illinois ex-state senator Obama, who is paid $400,000 a year, almost twice the amount paid to Joe Biden for doing whatever he does. But he's only from Delaware.

The top paychecks include:

Chief of Staff William Daley, who is the brother of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, who just retired and left the top Democratic-machine job there to Rahm Emanuel, who was Obama's chief of staff and before that held the Chicago House seat of Rod Blagojevich, who had given it up to become governor of Illinois, which he no longer is due to impeachment and, now, conviction on 17 counts of fraud.

The Daleys' father, Richard J. Daley, was also a longtime Chicago mayor whose operatives provided Illinois' crucial electoral votes to elect John F. Kennedy president back in 1960 before Obama was born.

Valerie Jarrett has a White House title as long as Chicago's winters (senior advisor and assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs and public engagement). Before this, she was a chief of staff for the most recent Mayor Daley and hired an assistant named Michelle Robinson, who went on, of course, to become Mrs. Barack Obama, whose chief of staff also earns the top $172G paycheck.

This year, the one before Obama's attempted reelection, he reduced his staff by 15 people and $1.7 million.

Some White House aides have already returned to Chicago as campaign employees, including political strategist David Axelrod, who helped elect the most recent Mayor Daley, as well as, briefly, Sen. Obama and then President Obama. Axelrod also made the top salary when he had to live in Washington.

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861 days and $787 billion in, Obama pleads for more time on creating jobs

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Pete Souza / White House (Obama addresses his staff, file); Kevin Dietsch / EPA (the Obamas greet guests at another White House party, July 4) .

President Obama to join Twitter's Jack Dorsey in White House town hall

President Obama, no stranger to social networks and public meetings, will participate in a melding of the two July 6, when he will have an online town hall at the White House moderated by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.

"Today, the White House announced through its official Twitter account, @whitehouse, that it will host its first ever Twitter town hall on Wednesday, July 6, at 2 p.m. ET in the East Room of the White House. Twitter co-founder and Executive Chairman Jack Dorsey will moderate a conversation between President Obama and Americans across the country about the economy and jobs. Starting today, Twitter users can submit questions using the hashtag #AskObama. More information from Twitter can be found at the event’s homepage: http://askobama.twitter.com," the White House said in a statement.

Obama, who has almost 9 million followers to his @BarackObama Twitter feed, joined billionaire Mark Zuckerberg in April for a Facebook town hall. Obama used that platform to explain some of his policies and didn't hesitate to take shots at Republicans.

"The Republican budget put forward is fairly radical, but I would not call it courageous," Obama said in April. "You can call that bold; I would call it shortsighted."

Dorsey, who sent the world's first tweet while testing out the system in March 2006, appears to be a fan of the president. In December 2008 the Twitter co-founder tweeted, "Obama is the only president in my lifetime who's used the word 'empathy.' That's exciting."

What must also have been exciting for Dorsey this week was when his new start-up, Square, announced that it had raised $100 million of investment.

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-- Tony Pierce
twitter.com/busblog

Andrew Malcolm is on vacation

Photo: President Obama uses his BlackBerry on June 3, 2010, as he walks at Sidwell Friends school in Bethesda, Md. Call him the Digital Candidate: He has asked supporters to use Facebook to declare "I'm in" for his reelection campaign and has begun using Twitter to communicate with his nearly 9 million followers. Credit: AP Photo/Charles Dharapak

White House complained to MSNBC over Mark Halperin's 'inappropriate' analysis of Obama

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters Thursday that he contacted MSNBC big wigs over the offensive term that "Morning Joe" political analyist Mark Halperin uttered earlier in the day.

“The comment that was made was inappropriate.  It would be inappropriate to say that about any president of either party.  And on behalf of the White House, I expressed that sentiment to executives at the network,” Carney explained.  

Carney complained to the network after it had suspended Halperin indefinitely but didn't want to discuss if the Obama administration was pleased with the swift move.

“I have no comment on that -- whatever action that network, any network, any newspaper or whatever might make and -- because that's not for us to decide, and we didn't -- certainly -- you know, we just expressed our concern about the inappropriateness of the comment," Carney said.

“Are we on the seven-second delay today?” Halperin asked "Morning Joe" co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, a hint that what he wanted to say would in some way contain spicy language.

“I wanted to characterize how I thought the president behaved,” Halperin said in reference to comments Obama made Wednesday in a news conference where he compared Congress's work habits to that of his pre-teen daughters.

“Take a chance,” Scarborough goaded.

Obama says Congress could learn a lesson from his daughters

President Obama on Wednesday used a simple example to show his frustration with a Congress that seems, in his mind, to be dragging their feet to reluctantly make the hard choices that face them in order to reach a deal on debt reduction.

Instead of waiting until the last minute to make the needed compromises to cut the federal deficit the president held up his own young daughters as examples of how lawmakers, who are eying a recess on Friday, should be working.

"Malia and Sasha, generally finish their homework a day ahead of time," Obama said at a news conference at the White House. 

"Malia's 13, Sasha's 10," the president reminded reporters. "They don't wait until the night before. They're not pulling all-nighters. They're 13 and 10. Congress can do the same thing. If you know you've got to do something, just do it."

Following up on that theme, the president later questioned Congress's habit of leaving Washington even though there's work to do.

"They're in one week, they're out one week and then they're saying 'Obama's got to step in," the president said. "You need to be here. I've been here. I've been doing Afghanistan and Bin Laden ... Greek crisis. You stay here. Let's get it done."

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-- Tony Pierce
Twitter.com/busblog

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Photo: President Obama talks with daughters Sasha and Malia in the Oval Office before pardoning a turkey named Apple in the Rose Garden on Nov. 24, 2010.  Credit: Pete Souza / Official White House photo

Barack Obama admits thinking like a Republican on some days, at least about leaving after one term

Some surprisingly good news for the assembling posse of Republicans angling for the White House:

Barack Obama says he's good with their idea of him serving only one term.

The Democrat admitted to NBC's Ann Curry that some times are more difficult than others in the Oval Office."There are days where I say that one term is enough," the aging president said in an interview broadcast the morning after the first GOP debate in New Hampshire.

Obama added:

Michelle and the kids are wonderful in that if I said, 'You know, guys, I want to do something different,' they'd be fine. They're not invested in daddy being president or my husband being president.

Neither, it seems, is the growing field of Republican challengers and millions of Americans expressing increased disapproval of Obama's job performance. According to Gallup, this president's average approval in 2011 so far is 46%, down from last year's 47.3%.

In the week ending June 12, Obama's job approval was 46%, down from 50% the previous week, while his disapproval was 44%, up from 42%.

Dissatisfaction with his job on the economy seems especially high with nearly two-out-of-three disapproving. It must have something to do with gas prices being up 104% since he became president, the national debt growing by 35% to $14.3 trillion and unemployment jumping from 7.3% on his Inauguration Day to 9.1% lately.

Coincidentally, in the same time period Obama's approval has tumbled from 69%.

However, Obama's one-term thinking is just TV talk. While seven debating Republicans were trying to finish a complete sentence or two between John King's interruptions on CNN Monday evening, Obama was doing three fundraisers in Miami , with another offshore Tuesday in Puerto Rico.

At the same time Michelle Obama seems pretty invested in her husband's reelection, doing a string of her own political money harvests on the West Coast.

Obama, who turns a half-century old this summer, added in his NBC interview that what keeps him going on tough days is thinking of all the many things he still wants to do on education and energy. And, no doubt, the fact that there's still a few hundred billion dollars he has yet to spend.

The president has shared some other notable ruminations. At one of those Florida funders, Obama made yet another of his promises. He vowed that 2012 will be the last time Americans see his name on a ballot.

And he claimed: "Frankly, Michelle would have been happy if I had just kept on teaching and writing books."

In recent days, Obama was also forced to step into the distracting mess surrounding the married New York Rep. Anthony Weiner, who has admitted talking and texting dirty with a half dozen women around the country and generously sharing cellphone photographs of himself snapped in unusual places.

Curry asked the president about that fellow Democrat. And Obama said if he was in Weiner's towel, he would resign.

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-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photos: Mario Anzuoni / Reuters (Obama in Beverly Hills); Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press (Obama returns from Puerto Rico fundraiser, June 14).

Anthony Weiner is a distraction, White House says

Anthony Weiner, the fiery New York congressman who was literally caught with his pants down, has become a distraction, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Monday.

While answering questions aboard Air Force One before President Obama was to land in Morrisville, N.C., Carney said the Weiner matter is one that Congress should address.

One reporter asked Carney in a roundabout way whether Obama feels Weiner should resign.

"Jay, does the president have a position on whether Anthony Weiner’s continued service in the U.S. Congress is in the nation’s best interests?" the reporter asked.

"The president feels -- we feel at the White House that this is a distraction," Carney replied. "Obviously as Congressman Weiner has said himself, this is -- the behavior was inappropriate; the dishonesty was inappropriate.  But the president is focused on his job, which is getting this economy continuing to grow, creating jobs, and obviously ensuring the safety and security of the American people."

Of course, there were follow-ups to that reply.

"Did any of the president’s top aides have any role in engineering or encouraging Anthony Weiner to resign or to step aside?" Carney was asked.

Party time again: Michelle Obama explains the Angela Merkel state dinner for you guys without invites

Another big night in the Barack Obama White House today, planned as another Salahi-free state dinner. This one is for Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, whom Obama hasn't seen since their big meeting in France two weeks ago.

This is the fourth of these big to-do's, the most recent one being for China's President Hu. It'll be in the Rose Garden at the first lady's suggestion. In Washington culture, invites to these things are much coveted in a bipartisan way -- and used as rewards or persuasive invitations to become more helpful, politically speaking, to the big guy in the round office. Who knows, there are certainly donors in here too.

Two-hundred-and-twenty elites will partake in the grand soiree. Scroll down for Michelle Obama's own take on what the evening holds. And scroll even further to see all the guests who did make the cut (Lots of Honourable This and That, but also columnist E.J. Dionne, Diane Sawyer, Susan Eisenhower, James Hoffa and Chief Justice John Roberts).

While the political royalty dines outside the White House this evening, a gaggle of Republicans will be arguing up in New Hampshire, as the Democratic debate competition opens to become the host of future state dinners after Jan. 20, 2013.

The eat-less admonitions of the first lady go out the bulletproof windows at....

White House says the war is working – the war on drugs

The White House needs to address the costly war on drugs, says a high-profile panel that includes former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and past presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia. But the Obama administration says the fight against illegal drug use is working, and it wants more than $26 billion in 2012 to continue the battle.

"We cannot have one recipe. It’s not so easy to say, 'Stop the war on drugs and let’s legalize'; it’s more complicated than that," former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, chairman of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, said Thursday at a news conference in New York. "Between prohibition and legalization there is an enormous variety of solutions in between."

"The U.S. needs to open a debate," former Colombian President Cesar Gaviria, a member of the panel, told Times reporters. "When you have 40 years of a policy that is not bringing results, you have to ask if it's time to change it."

The commission, which also includes former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and British billionaire Richard Branson, prepared a report that recommends governments attempt creative ways of legally regulating drugs, especially marijuana, as a way to stymie profits from gangs and cartels.

The White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy quickly sent out a statement claiming the war on drugs is working.

"Drug use in America is half of what it was 30 years ago, cocaine production in Colombia has dropped by almost two-thirds, and we’re successfully diverting thousands of nonviolent offenders into treatment instead of jail by supporting alternatives to incarceration," said Rafael Lemaitre, communications director of the White House drug policy office.

How President Obama barely beat the deadline to sign the Patriot Act extension -- without picking up a pen

Because extending certain provisions of the Patriot Act before they expired at midnight last night was deemed so essential to national security, the extension legislation was, of course, left until the last minutes, thanks to the political paragons of Congress.

Republicans wanted a permanent extension. Democrats didn't.

They settled on June 1, 2015.

After a feud about guns, the four-year Patriot Act Sunset Extensions of 2011 passed in the Senate Thursday 72-23.

Then, with barely 300 minutes to spare, the House passed the same measure, 250-153. Our colleague Lisa Mascaro carefully chronicles some of the bill's provisions, what all the government spooks can peek into now still with secret federal court approval.

Phew, that was close! Law-abiding terrorists were just waiting for midnight (Eastern Daylight) to start plotting on the phone.

But, wait! The Patriot Act extension couldn't become law until it was signed by the president.

And if this is Friday, Obama must be off on another foreign trip somewhere. Sure enough, they found him 3,719 miles away toughing out a couple of days with other G-8 leaders in the French resort of Deauville.

According to aides, Obama had to be awakened early Friday, which was after the deadline by French beach resort time.

The commander-in-chief reportedly reviewed the provisions carefully and ordered his signature affixed to said bill.

Wait! What? The president of the United States didn't actually sign it himself??

Remember, back in 2009 when Obama was so excited about the economic stimulus bill that didn't really work as well as Joe Biden promised everybody? And so Obama flew Air Force One out to Denver with the legislation to personally sign it there, for some reason?

Well, here's one of the dirty not-so-little secrets of American politics. Yes, the....

Obama White House celebrates 50 years of the Situation Room being there

Statement by the Press Secretary on 50th Anniversary of the White House Situation Room, as provided by Jay Carney

To mark the 50th anniversary of the opening of the White House Situation Room, today the President delivered remarks to the Situation Room staff to thank them for their around-the-clock work to keep the President informed and the country safe.

“We could not meet the national security challenges that we face without the capabilities of this room and the people who work here,” the President said.

“It’s the President’s eyes and ears. Providing the latest information and alerts, it’s the nerve center for the U.S. government, the place where we come together to make policy and respond to crises from wars abroad to floods at home.”

The President also presided over a ceremony to name a secure conference room after the father of the Situation Room, President John F. Kennedy.

In attendance at the ceremony were:

President Obama, Caroline Kennedy, John "Jack" Schlossberg, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John Brennan, Former National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, Former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, Former National Security Advisor Richard Allen, Former National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane, Former National Security Advisor John Poindexter, Former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, Former National Security Advisor James Jones, Former Homeland Security Advisor Fran Townsend and Former Homeland Security Advisor Kenneth Wainstein.     ####

 

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Photos: Yoichi Okamoto / Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library (Johnson meets in the Situation Room during a 1967 crisis); Pete Souza / White House (Osama bin Laden raid, 2011).