The White House’s 36 tax-delinquents put President Barack Obama’s personal office in the top tier of IRS deadbeats.
The White House’s 36 tax deadbeats owe an average of $23,165.33, far above the average federal delinquent’s outstanding debt of $13,911.
The revelation comes two days after Obama used his State of the Union speech to declare that “we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, and everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.”
White House officials declined to comment to The Daily Caller.
However, Obama’s deadbeat colleagues are amateurs compared to the three deadbeats on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Board, which includes several wealthy lawyers and politicians tasked by the Democrats to investigate the cause of the 2007 financial crisis.
The board’s three unnamed deadbeats have a personal financial crisis at the IRS worth an average of $211,379 each.
The debt of Obama’s delinquents is ranked seventh of 102 federal agencies and commissions for 2010, according to data sent by the IRS to TheDC.
By amount owed per deadbeat, Obama’s office ranks behind the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, the Presidio Trust, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Education, the nine-member International Boundary and Water Commission, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The IRS data shows that 413 EPA employees owe an average of $47,151.28, and 176 Department of Education employees owe an average of $24,355.09.
Republicans immediately seized on the story to taunt Obama. “Before he launches this ‘pay your fair share’ game, maybe he ought to look at his own staff and figure out whether his own people are paying their fair share,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in Fox News interview.
The IRS doesn’t release individuals’ names, so it’s not possible to know if the outstanding tax-bills are justified due to personal crises, or caused by a few outliers in a small organization, such as the 50-employee board.
The Executive Office of the President has 1,794 employees, and 36 people who are behind on their tax payments.
That’s a fairly low delinquency rate of 2.01 percent, albeit slightly higher than the 2.00 percent delinquency rate in the military, which has more than 200,000 people deployed in and near Afghanistan and Iraq.
But the average unpaid bill of Obama’s 36 delinquents’ — $25,165.83 — is among the highest in the federal government.
For example, the 29,483 military taxpayers who owed the IRS owed an average of $3,765.95.
That score makes them the ninth most diligent set of tax-payers among the 102 agencies and commissions listed by the IRS.
During Tuesday’s State of the Union Speech, Obama used the military’s achievements as an example for all other Americans. “At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations. They’re not consumed with personal ambition. They don’t obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together. … Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example.”
There’s no need to imagine, because the IRS data shows that the federal government would have an extra $698,377.68 if Obama’s deadbeats were as diligent as the nation’s military in paying their taxes.