The President's $200,000 annual salary should be doubled, at least partly because it is holding down salaries for civil servants at all levels, witnesses told a House subcommittee Wednesday.
Keeping the President's salary low results in salary compression for the rest of the federal workforce, several experts testified before the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Management, Information and Technology said.
Adjusting the President's salary is not an issue of the President's personal income, but of wage compression, said Thomas F. "Mack" McLarty III, former chief of staff to President Clinton. Civil servants have families with real financial stresses, McLarty said.
"The bottom line is that private sector salaries are increasing and government salaries are not," McLarty said. The government "shouldn't put people in the position of making the difficult choice between their family and their country," he said. Presidential pay has not been increased since 1969. A recent provision in the Treasury appropriations bill would raise the President's salary to $400,000 beginning in 2001.
Sam Skinner, former chief of staff to President George Bush, said the cap on the President's salary is one cause of poor recruitment and retention in the federal government, because no other elected official or civil servant can make more than the President. Pay compression problems make it difficult to attract the top candidates for government jobs, Skinner said.
But Sharon Gressle, a specialist in American national government at the Congressional Research Service, said that given historical trends, it's unlikely a presidential pay hike would result in a rapid rise in pay for other federal employees.
Gary Ruskin, executive director of the Congressional Accountability Project, argued against a presidential salary increase, saying that the President's current pay level provides an effective cap on salaries for members of Congress, federal judges and other high-ranking government officials.
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