Rep. Jason Chaffetz
went on MSNBC on Thursday where, among other things, he defended his
embarrassment of a hearing this week in which he and fellow Republicans grilled Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards, seemingly about the doctored videos showing PPFA affiliates doing illegal things with fetal tissue donations. In Thursday's interview, Chris Matthews tried to pin Chaffetz down on the new information about those videos.
MATTHEWS: And what do you make of the mother who came forward and said the picture that was used to attack Planned Parenthood by the pro-life forces was actually a stillborn child of hers after 19 weeks of pregnancy and had nothing to do with Planned Parenthood? What do you make of that acknowledgment?
CHAFFETZ: I don't know many details about that. The hearing that we held was about the financing of Planned Parenthood. We tried not to get into the videos, and I have not reviewed the details of that picture.
Ooookay. So now the hearings didn't have anything to do with the videos, but were all about PPFA's financing. Let's address that. One of the ongoing themes from Republicans in that hearing was Richard's salary, over which they got downright nasty. For example, Chaffetz
himself: "Your compensation in 2009 was $353,000. […] Congratulations. In 2013, your compensation went up some $240,000. Your compensation, we're showing based on tax returns, is $590,000, correct?" That wasn't correct, and Richards cleared that up. Her salary is $524,000. What's more, that salary is not exorbitant, and
is pretty damned reasonable among non-profit healthcare organizations of the same size.
Planned Parenthood's revenue [in 2013] was $139 million.
Of 38 organizations with revenue within $10 million of Planned Parenthood's, Richards' pay of $524,000 ranked 19th, according to Modern Healthcare's Not-for-profit Executive Compensation Database.
This put her in the 53rd percentile of this group of CEOs.
The highest paid person in an equivalent position was paid $1.7 million, which might indeed be exorbitant. What Richards makes is typical, and, by the way, not paid out of federal dollars. As Richards explained, or tried to when she could get a word in edgewise, the federal money Planned Parenthood gets is in reimbursement for healthcare services provided.
Richards deserves at least what she gets in compensation just for having to put up with the kind of bullshit she does from the likes of Chaffetz.