If you ever stop to wonder why this country is broke, it shouldn’t take you long to figure it out. As the old saying goes, the inmates are running the asylum.
But apparently, while the rest of us are scrambling to make ends meet, and facing ever higher taxes and less to live on, in Washington, it’s business as usual. Which means every man for himself, and screw the taxpayers.
Consider this – Vice President Joe Biden has found a way to make a buck (actually quiet a few bucks) off his Secret Service security detail. A news story has reported that since April, Biden has collected over $13,000 from the Secret Service for rent on a small cottage next door to his home, where agents stay during their off duty hours. And the VP isn’t even giving the Secret Service (or the taxpayers) a break on the rent, charging them the same $2200 a month that he did the previous tenants!
A Secret Service spokesperson said the agency does not pay rent to other protectees, but since the cottage became available, and was close to Biden’s home, it moved in.
Okay, from what I have read, Biden is a mere pauper compared to a lot of the other folks in Washington, with a net worth of less than $200,000. The Vice President and his wife reported their gross income was $379,178 on their 2010 tax return. This included Biden’s annual salary of $227,300, and his wife, Jill Biden’s, salary of $82,488 as a schoolteacher. I ask you, who can live on that kind of money?
I have to wonder how a guy making that kind of money has such a small net worth? What’s old Joe blowing his money on? And do we really want somebody who apparently can’t manage any better than Mr. Biden is on his salary helping to run the government?
Does it strike anybody else as wrong that we are paying this guy a salary of $227,000 annually, along with the other perks that go with his office, and now we’re paying him to provide his protection? Couldn’t he at least knock the rent down to, oh, say an even two grand a month? Come on, Joe, work with us! Times are hard and we all have to make sacrifices!
