WH payroll: 28 'assistants' for Joe; 20 staffers for Jill

FPI / July 12, 2023

Joe Biden in Fiscal Year 2023 spent more than $52 million in taxpayer funds on a bloated White House payroll that includes 20 staffers for Jill Biden and several designated to work on Covid-19 even though Biden declared the pandemic over, OpenTheBooks reported.

The top paid White House staffer is Demetre C. Daskalakis ($260,718), who is deputy coordinator for the Monkeypox Response Team which has been almost absent from the news since September of last year.

The second most highly paid is Senior Deputy Associate Counsel Anand H. Das ($216,414).

Other facts from the White House's annual report to Congress on payroll:

• Of the 524 White House staffers, 313 are women. The women take home $30.9 million in salaries, with an average salary of $98,868. Men make up 207 of the staffers, collecting $21.5 in salaries, with an average salary of $103,801. Four staffers had gender-ambiguous names and could not be verified.

• Biden's White House has 28 “Assistants to the President” – the most trusted advisors to the president. This year, 20 of these advisors make $180,000 and eight make $168,000.

• Biden declared the Covid pandemic to be “over” on Sept. 19, 2022. The official federal public health emergency declaration was ended on May 11, 2023. Yet the White House still hosts multiple staffers with a title that includes “COVID-19 Response,” with salaries ranging from $183,500 for Karuna Sashasai (Senior Policy Advisor for the COVID-19 Response) to $51,500 for Theodore Sorota (Advisor to the Deputy Coordinator of the COVID-19 Response).

• 20 staffers work for Jill Biden. First Lady Michelle Obama was heavily criticized for her 24-member staff in 2009 including assistants, advisors, schedulers, directors, deputies, associates, social and press secretaries, and other "helpers." Melania Trump’s staff fluctuated between five and 12 throughout President Donald Trump's term.

• Joe Biden, who has become quite wealthy in his five decades in the Swamp, doesn’t donate his $400,000 salary. Trump was the first since John F. Kennedy to donate his pre-tax quarterly salary to government agencies.

"The large Biden White House payroll had been a leading indicator of his commitment to expand the federal bureaucracy at all levels," OpenTheBooks noted. "In the first nine days of his presidency, Biden issued many executive orders expanding the size, scope, and power of the federal bureaucracy."

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