When Dr. Anthony Fauci decides to retire, he is set to receive a federal retirement package that would pay out $350,00 per year, according to a report from Forbes. This would mean that Fauci is in line for the largest federal retirement package ever.
The base $350,000 does not include annual cost of living increases to Fauci’s pension and benefits.
Fauci, who recently turned 81, has been a government employee for 55 years.
He was paid $434,312 in 2020, making him the highest-paid federal employee on record. That pay stub amounted to a 4% increase over Fauci’s 2019 salary, according to federalpay.org.
Fauci had previously received a sizable pay raise for biodefense work during the Bush years. From 2004 through 2007, Fauci received a 68% pay increase from $200,000 to $335,000 a year. This remained permanent and carried forward through 2020.
Forbes used the last three available years of Fauci’s salary to calculate his potential retirement benefits.
“If he’d left federal service at the end of FY2020, figuring 80 [percent] of his highest three-year average, would mean a federal pension of $333,745 a year, plus cost-of-living increases (($1,251,545/3) x 80% = $333,745),” Forbes estimated.
Fauci is also likely eligible to receive an annuity payment that applies to federal employees with more than ten years of service. That would amount to an additional $8,344 per year.
Fauci’s 2021 salary has yet to be published, though Forbes said it had filed a Freedom of Information Act request in November for the information.
Despite the hefty retirement package, Fauci has no plans to retire anytime soon.
“There’s no way I’m going to walk away from this until we get this under control.”
“In the middle of it, I’m not going to walk away,” Fauci recently told Jonathan Karl of ABC News.
Fauci was heralded as a mascot of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, though the mass release of his emails via a FOIA request sharply divided the country’s opinion of the longtime bureaucrat.