On Wednesday, President Obama jumped in with his own show of solidarity by pledging to return to the Treasury 5 percent of his $400,000 salary.
By Thursday, the Obama administration’s stampede to embrace the politics of self-sacrifice was on. Cabinet secretaries practically tripped over themselves to hand over parts of their paycheck as federal workers brace for furloughs because of the across-the-board budget cuts known as the sequester.
Secretary of State John Kerry said he would give 5 percent of his $200,000 government salary to charity, and the Justice Department said that if its workers are furloughed, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. would give up his pay for however many days his workers go without a paycheck.
Of course, they can well afford it. Mr. Kerry has an estimated net worth exceeding $200 million and Mr. Hagel, Mr. Holder and Mr. Obama are all millionaires.
But by the end of the day, the merely affluent, at least by Washington standards, were lining up. Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary who has an estimated net worth between $93,000 and $700,000, will forgo 5 percent of her salary, her office said. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew, who is worth between $750,000 and $1.7 million, will also give up a portion of his pay, although Treasury officials would not specify how much.
All cabinet secretaries make about $200,000 a year, and the richest of them have multiple millions.
Mr. Holder’s net worth is estimated between $4 million and $8 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which calculates the finances of government officials based on publicly available financial disclosure forms. Mr. Hagel’s latest financial disclosure documents show millions of dollars in assets in various investment accounts. The Obamas’ net worth is estimated somewhere between $2.6 million and $8.3 million, thanks in large part to income from the president’s book sales.
Still, not all cabinet members were giving themselves pay cuts. Kathleen Sebelius, the health and human services secretary whose estimated net worth is as high as $5 million, had no plans to reduce her salary because her department was not expecting any furloughs, her office said. A similar dynamic has slowly been playing out on Capitol Hill, where the sequester cuts will affect the budgets of Congressional offices but not members’ salaries. (Like the president and cabinet secretaries, salaries of the House and Senate are set by law.)
Eleanor Holmes Norton, who represents the District of Columbia and its hundreds of thousands of federal employees, said last month that she would stop collecting her pay for each day federal employees are furloughed.
“If you’re a member of Congress, surely the notion of lead by example should not just be a slogan,” she said, adding that she would not be able to look her colleagues and constituents in the eye if she continued to collect her full salary. “You might feel a little better about seeing them in the elevator if you’re sharing in their pain.” Members of the House and Senate make $174,000 annually.
Representative Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois, has said she would give back 8.4 percent of her pay, an amount roughly equal to the cut that many domestic programs are facing.
That was not enough self-sacrifice for Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who said he was giving up 20 percent of his pay.
Senator Mark Begich of Alaska, a Democrat who is expected to face a tough re-election race in 2014, said he would return part of his salary to the Treasury. But a call to his office to find out how much was met with a voice mail recording saying that sequester cuts had forced it to reduce office resources.