Men Make Up Top 8 Most Highly Compensated Clinton Foundation Employees

    In late February, Hillary Clinton, a self-proclaimed champion of women's rights and gender equity, came under fire for a Washington Free Beacon analysis that showed women on Mrs. Clinton's staff during her tenure in the Senate were paid an average of 72 cents on the dollar compared to male staff. Now, an analysis of the latest IRS filing for the foundation that bears her name, the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, shows a similar compensation disparity between men and women employees. Although compensation figures are available for only a limited number of Foundation personnel, the 2013 Form 990 filed with the IRS shows that out of eleven highly compensated individuals listed, the top eight are all men.
    While the Clinton Foundation regularly posts annual reports and financial statements on its website, there is no requirement that the organization list compensation for all employees. The 990 form, however, asks for a list of directors, officers, trustees, and "key employees", as well as the next five most highly compensated employees not in those other categories. For 2013, this list is comprised of twenty-three names, eleven of whom received compensation (members of the board of directors are not paid, except for the chairman, who also serves as CEO.) When sorted by total compensation, the first eight names on the list are men followed by three women below:

    A further analysis of the four most recent 990 filings shows that a "gender gap" among highly compensated employees at the Clinton Foundation has been relatively consistent over time, with the gap actually widening for the years considered in this analysis. The number of women represented in the highly compensated group has seen a decrease over the same time period. The data is summarized below showing the year, the average compensation of the highly compensated men versus that of the highly compensated women, the number of men versus women in the highly compensated group of individuals listed on the 990s, and the percentage on the dollar that those men were paid versus the women:

2010 - $210,000 vs. $149,000 (four men vs. five women) - 71%
2011 - $190,000 vs. $147,000 (five men vs. four women) - 77%
2012 - $257,000 vs. $166,000 (five men vs. three women) - 65%
2013 - $294,000 vs. $185,000 (eight men vs. three women) - 63%

    Again, this analysis does not consider all employees of the Clinton Foundation, but only those required to be listed on the 990. The total pay of the highly compensated employees for 2013 totals only $2.9 million versus total salaries and compensation for all employees of $29 million. Additionally, the following note regarding the presentation of the financial information appears on the website of the Clinton Foundation:

The Clinton Global Initiative was separately incorporated during fiscal years 2010, 2011, and 2012 at the request of the Obama Administration while Secretary Clinton was in office. As a result, CGI filed separate 990s with the IRS during that time. In 2013, when Secretary Clinton left office, CGI returned to the Clinton Foundation.

However, a review of compensation data for the three years in question for the separate 990s filed for the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) shows that inclusion of that data in the above analysis would have only served to widen the disparities. A detailed analysis combining the data from the CGI 990s with the Clinton Foundation 990s was not conducted.
    For those wishing to get a response from Mrs. Clinton on the apparent gender pay gap at the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation may get their chance sooner rather than later. Mrs. Clinton is scheduled to co-host a Foundation webcast live from New York on March 9, 2015, with her daughter Chelsea and Melinda Gates. The webcast is titled Not There Yet: A Data Driven Analysis of Gender Equality. At the event, the No Ceilings initiative will "release the findings of a year's worth of analysis on the gains women and girls have made and the gaps that remain."
    An email to the press contact for the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation seeking comment on the above compensation analysis, as well as a request for further compensation data to broaden the analysis, was not immediately returned.


Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

WH: Federal Contractor Executive Pay Higher than President Obama's Salary Is 'Excessive,' Wasteful

    On Thursday, the White House's Administrator for Federal Procurement Policy, Joe Jordan, wrote on the White House blog about a legislative initiative that President Obama is sending to Congress next week "to stop excessive payments to Federal contractors."  Jordan continues:

The proposal builds on previous Administration proposals and language included in the President’s Budget, and marks another important step in our ongoing effort to buy smarter and end wasteful, fiscally imprudent contract spending.

Under current law, contractors that are paid based on their incurred costs (which represents about one-third of current contract spending) may demand reimbursement for executive salaries, bonuses and other compensation up to the level of the Nation’s top private sector CEOs and other senior executives. This taxpayer reimbursement level has skyrocketed by more than 300 percent since the law was enacted in the mid-1990s.

    The president believes excessive compensation for executives is unnecessarily driving up costs for the government.  What is excessive?  Apparently, anything more than the president himself makes [emphasis added]:

The Administration’s proposal calls on Congress to abolish the current formula and instead tie the reimbursement cap to the President’s salary and apply it across-the-board to all defense and civilian cost-reimbursement contracts. Tying the cap to the President’s salary provides a reasonable level of compensation for high value Federal contractors while ensuring taxpayers are not saddled with paying excessive compensation costs. 

    The White House is quick to point out that there is no actual cap being instituted for private sector firms:

And to be clear, nothing in the proposal limits the amount contractors pay their executives. The cap only limits how much the government will reimburse the contractors for the services of those executives. 

    Despite the caveat, as the president likes to say, let us be clear.  Firms that pay their executives more than the president makes are "[saddling] taxpayers ... with paying excessive compensation costs."  IN case there was any doubt, Jordan closes with this:

We hope that this Congress, unlike the last one, will heed the urgent call to restore fiscal responsibility before additional taxpayer dollars that could be used to fund critical agency mission work are wasted unnecessarily to pay for costly overhead in the form of excessive contractor compensation.

Note: This article first appeared at The Weekly Standard.