'Right wing guy' Paddy Mac gets big bucks from taxpayers

Patrick McIlheran, the self-described "generally a right-wing guy" who used to write a column for the Journal Sentinel, bashing unions and public employees, became a public employee himself last June when he went to work for Sen. Ron Johnson and took his poison pen to Washington.

At the time it was reported that McIlheran would:

work out of Johnson's Washington, D.C., office, will research issues and write about them for the senator. McIlheran also will work for the Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce, and the District of Columbia, of which Johnson is the ranking member.

It's hard to know exactly what Paddy Mac does for RoJo. He's listed as a professional staff member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce and the District of Columbia Subcommittee, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. But it's common practice for Senators to offload some of their payroll onto their committees.

What we do know is that McIlheran has landed in a pretty cushy job at taxpayer expense.

Legistorm, which tracks Congressional salaries, reports that McIlheran was paid $27,213.84 between the time he bellied up to the public trough on June 20 and Sept. 30. That works out to an annual salary of $93,300.

And, of course, there's a government health care plan (horrors!) and lots of other benefits, including both Social Security and a pension. The Congressional Budget Office says benefits add 26% to 50% on top of salaries, depending on age, salary, length of service, and retirement plan. So that's at least another $25,000 from the taxpayers, and probably quite a bit more. But at least he doesn't have to join a union. That must be a relief for a generally anti-government, anti-union, anti-worker, bootstraps kind of guy.