Nosy Heifers Wanna Know, How Much Do A President & VP Get Paid?
Do you know the current annual salary for a president and vice-president?
I was bored and minding my own business being nosy, so I decided to do a quick looksie at Google Trends to see what Texans are searching for on the internet. I should have already known that the top things people in the Yakima Valley were looking up were stuff about conspiracy theories that The Simpsons cartoon predicted what outfit Kamala Harris would wear to her inauguration! Other searches included the new president, Joe Biden, and his right-hand woman, VP Kamala Harris.
I fell down a rabbit hole before discovering a rising search for "Vice-President Salary". Hmmm, I thought to myself, exactly how much money is Madame Kamala gonna be making, anyway? Nosy heifers like me wanna know!
On Wednesday, January 20th, viewers from all over the globe saw the inauguration of President Joseph Robinette Biden, and Kamala Davi Harris was sworn in as the first American female and person of color vice-president.
The weight of this inauguration is heavy. Millions of young children will grow up in a world where there is finally no barrier for women to reach the highest levels of power in the United States. (Why it's taken this long for the country to elect a woman, that's another story for another day.) There is a wave of excitement that is flowing across the country because of VP Harris, and you can feel it from the biggest metropolitan cities to the rural country nooks and crannies, and right down to the smallest towns of the Yakima Valley.
If you had asked me how much salary does a president make, I'd say they get paid $335,500. Let's just say if I was answering that question as a contestant on Jeopardy, I'd have lost the Final Round!
The correct answer is: What is $400,000 a year, Alex? (RIP Alex Trebek!)
If you asked me what salary does a vice-president make, I'd be like, "Um...wow, look at the time, would you? I gotta go!" (My way of saying, "I honestly have NO idea.")
USA Today newspaper to the rescue. They revealed to me that when Mike Pence was Vice-President, his party tried to get him a big "cost of living raise". Congress and former presidents have been fighting over a pay raise for the tough office of VP for over a decade. The current salary for a VP gig is $230,700.
A vice-president makes only $83,000 more than a member of Congress. (Take that little nugget of trivia in your hat and stuff it!)