When you are out-earning the President, four-star generals, and nearly (if not all) of your colleagues you’ve done something right. Or at least you haven’t screwed something up so bad that they got rid of you. Then again he also got a special ‘permanent pay adjustment’ from President Bush according to Forbes who broke the news of his massive retirement pay should he decide to hang it up. It provides him ‘80 percent of [their] high-3 average salary, plus credit for [their] sick leave’.
Per Forbes “Documents released to our non-profit organization OpenTheBooks.com reveal that Dr. Fauci was approved for a “permanent pay adjustment” in excess of his regular salary in December 2004, to “appropriately compensate him for the level of responsibility… especially as it relates to his work on biodefense research activities.” From 2004 through 2007, Fauci received a 68-percent pay increase from $200,000- to $335,000-a year. This award was permanent and carried forward through 2020.”
This is an amazing compensation package and an insane raise in pay. While he certainly manages some of the best and brightest, the question of how overpaid he has become is a real concern for the American people. While it’s less than most professional athletes earn, that percentage in pay increase is something you don’t see in any area of profession, and the true shocker.
Given the level of responsibility (as Forbes recognized) his position requires, the level of knowledge and care it entails, and the heavy stress of the position, it’s not surprising to see this kind of pay while serving in the position. Yet there is a question about his interests in other sectors of healthcare, and the financing his department provides funding for experiments that are largely criticized as being cruel and inhumane. Granted some of these are necessary before going to human trials, others like the beagles infested with sandfleas and left untreated are far beyond reasonable.
Fact is, these acts occur outside US borders, there is little the American people or government can do about it. Given the government is the one paying for it anyway, they wouldn’t do a thing even if they could. They give Fauci a level of autonomy on these topics that they refuse to grant the American people on COVID and many other facets of their life.
Dr. Fauci has made it very clear that he isn’t going anywhere any time soon while speaking with ABC’s Jonathan Karl earlier in December. “There’s no way I’m going to walk away from this until we get this under control. I mean, that’s the purpose of what we do. That’s – that’s our mission in life. In the middle of it, I’m not going to walk away…It’s kind of like we’re halfway through World War II, and you decide, well, I think I’ve had enough of this. You can’t do that. You’ve got to finish it — and we’re going to finish this and get back to normal.”
Dr. Fauci is right though, we need to finish it. There is a lot of work left undone, and even more so there are a lot of questions about how this occurred that also need to be answered. His name isn’t clean on these questions either, so he has things to answer for as well. Hopefully, he has an opportunity to answer for the involvement of his office and others he is linked with on the COVID-19 pandemic. While the lines connecting them are not the clearest, they still exist and warrant a real investigation.
