Obama's tax returns show leap in income

Posted on Tuesday, March 25, 2008 9:21 PM ET
Filed Under:

By Jim Popkin, NBC News Senior Investigative Producer

The tax returns for Sen. Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, offer new insights into the power couple's rising fortunes. They chronicle the candidate's rise from state legislator to U.S. senator and beyond. 

The tax returns are dated between 2000 and 2006, showing a steep increase in family income.

For example, the first return indicates that the Obamas' combined income was $240,505. That included Obama's salary as a young state senator in Illinois, $16,500 in fees as a "foundation director/educational speaker," and his wife's salary as a hospital administrator.

But just six years later in 2006, the Obamas' combined income was $983,826, some $740,000 more. Obama had become a U.S. senator by then, making about $165,000 a year, and his wife's income from the University of Chicago Medical Center had sharply climbed to about $265,000 a year.

Obama's book-writing career had also become profitable, earning him $551,240 in author fees for 2006 alone.

Click here to read the full story. Click here to see the PDF.

Comments

Jim,
If you want to "go where the money is", take a look at this blog entry, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/4/14/133912/896/830/495484 which outlines recent reports as to how $25,000,000 from sleazy foreign interests has been brought in to pump up the otherwise insolvent campaigns of Sen. McCain and Sen. Clinton.

What's happend to 'investigative reporting' in politics?  McCain's OFFSHORE FUNDRAISER went virtually unreported, and the FOREIGN AGENTS running the Clinton campaign get looked at only briefly, in passing, in the context of some irrelevant debate on 'trade policy'.

Doesnt anyone in the network media find anything objectionable about Eight-Figure sums being pumped into two out of three U.S. presidential campaigns, from interlocking foreign interests?

How about it?

Press-to-Digitate (Tuesday, April 15, 2008 12:33 AM)



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Deep Background is NBC News’ investigative blog. It covers national security, terrorism, spies, Iraq, and politics, as well as government waste, fraud and abuse. It is edited by NBC News Senior Investigative Producer Jim Popkin.

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