President Joe Biden’s decision on whether to forgive student debt will be personal for many of his aides, who are among the millions of Americans carrying loans for college and graduate school.
At least 30 senior White House staffers have student loan balances, according to 2021 financial disclosures Bloomberg News obtained from the Office of Government Ethics, including Biden’s new press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, and Bharat Ramamurti, deputy director of the National Economic Council.
Collectively, they owe as much as $4.7 million, the documents show, including one legislative aide who reported owing between $500,000 and $1 million. Generally, only senior or well-paid White House staff have to file financial disclosures, and they don’t have to report debt less than $10,000, meaning the total number of Biden’s aides with loan balances is certainly higher.
From a May 6 profile of Karine Jean-Pierre:
According to the 2021 Annual Report to Congress on White House Personnel, as the deputy assistant to the president and principal deputy press secretary and senior adviser, Jean-Pierre’s salary was $155,000 per year. She will get a bump in pay upon taking over Psaki’s assistant to the president and press secretary roles and will make $180,000 a year, which places her among the most highly compensated staffers in President Biden’s administration.
Jean-Pierre joined the faculty of Columbia University in 2014 as a lecturer at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), teaching courses on campaign management. According to Glassdoor and Indeed the typical Columbia University Lecturer salary sits around $65,000.
As a staffer for Elizabeth Warren, Ramamurti made $91,874.88 in the 2016 fiscal year, $108,833.25 in the 2017 fiscal year, and $111,999.92 in the 2018 fiscal year. He then moved to the Warren presidential campaign, and from there, Senator Chuck Schumer appointed him to the Congressional Oversight Commission to oversee pandemic spending.
Commission members who were not federal employees were paid “at a rate equal to the daily equivalent of the annual rate of basic pay for level I of the Executive Schedule for each day (including travel time) during which such member is engaged in the actual performance of duties vested in the Oversight Commission,” and reimbursed for travel expenses. For fiscal 2020, Level I of the Executive Schedule is $219,200 annually.
In Biden’s 2021 disclosure of White House salaries, Ramamurti is being paid $130,000 per year. (In the Trump administration, the deputy director of the National Economic Council was paid $165,000.)