Obama Makes $20,000 Gesture in Battle Over Trillion Dollar Deficits

Symbolic. Nothing more.

President Obama plans to return 5 percent of his salary to the Treasury in solidarity with federal workers who are going to be furloughed as part of the automatic budget cuts known as the sequester, an administration official said Wednesday.

The voluntary move would be retroactive to March 1, the official said, and apply through the rest of the fiscal year, which ends in September. The White House came up with the 5 percent figure to approximate the level of spending cuts to nondefense federal agencies that took effect that day.

“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,” the official said, before joining the president’s entourage for a round of golf, a party with Justin Timberlake, and then an expensive, luxurious flight to Denver to sell the president’s doomed gun control plan.

I may have embellished that last sentence a little.

The president’s official salary is $400,000, so a 5% giveback amounts to $20,000. But he makes far more off his two autobiographies, and his house, meals, security and travel are all paid for by you and by me. He and his family have already taken four vacations in 2013, all on our dime.

He isn’t cutting back on any of that.