‘Mapping The Swamp’ Report Shows It’s Even Bigger, Costlier Than You Think

Paying federal workforce costs taxpayers $1.1M per minute, according to a pro-transparency group, Open The Books

James P. Cochrane earns $250,335 annually as chief marketing and sales officer for the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), making him the highest paid public relations employee of the federal government. The USPS lost $5.1 billion in 2016.

Right behind Cochrane is Stephen Katsanos, who pulls down $229,333 as a public affairs official for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). And the third highest-paid federal public relations employee is Titus Simmons, also of the FDIC, at $215,248, according to “Mapping The Swamp,” a new report compiled by Open The Books, an independent nonprofit that tracks federal spending using the government’s own numbers.

LINK: OpenTheBooks Oversight Report 
MAPPING THE SWAMP

These three individuals are among the 3,618 federal workers who get an average of $101,827 annually to put the best possible “spin” on government every day. That comes to $368.4 million a year. A big reason for such a huge sum is that 1,807 of the federal government’s public relations workers are paid $100,000 or more, up from 1,501 in 2012.

In fairness to Cochrane, the USPS is a semigovernment corporation and had to contribute $5.8 billion to pre-fund postal retiree health care costs. Without the pre-funding, the USPS would have shown a $200 million profit, according to official postal data. The pre-funding is the focus of an intense and long-running debate between USPS officials and Congress.

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