Obama to take sequester pay cut: report

WASHINGTON, April 3 (Xinhua) -- President Barack Obama plans to return 5 percent of his salary to the U.S. Treasury, in solidarity with federal workers who are going to be furloughed in the automatic budget cuts known as the sequester, The New York Times said in an online report on Wednesday.

The move would be retroactive to March 1 and apply through the rest of the fiscal year, which ends in September. The White House came up with the 5-percent figure to approximate the level of spending cuts to nondefense federal agencies that took effect at the beginning of last month.

The newspaper quoted an unnamed official as saying that Obama " has decided that to share in the sacrifice being made by public servants across the federal government that are affected by the sequester."

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced earlier that they would return a share of their salaries to show solidarity with civilian Pentagon employees, a majority of whom are to be furloughed.

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