I’m speaking of Kenneth Feinberg, President Obama’s “Special Master for TARP Executive Compensation.” Judicial Watch recently received documents from the Treasury Department indicating that Feinberg received a $120,830 annual salary to establish executive compensation levels at companies bailed out by the federal government. We got hold of these documents pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request we filed on July 20, 2010.

Now there’s nothing necessarily unusual about a federal appointee hauling in six figures. But here’s the problem: These documents contradict multiple press reports that Feinberg would not be compensated for this work for the Treasury Department at all.

When President Obama appointed Washington lawyer Feinberg “Pay Czar” in 2009, the press reported that he would perform his duties pro bono. Dozens of mainstream media stories confirmed that Feinberg, founder and managing partner of the Washington, D.C., firm Feinberg, Rozen, LLP, would not receive a salary to set pay limits for more than two dozen executives at companies receiving government bailouts.

For example, Forbes magazine reported in August 2009 (via Reuters), “Feinberg is receiving no compensation for his role.”

However, Judicial Watch has obtained the Treasury Department’s June 8, 2009, welcome letter to Feinberg, congratulating him for being selected “Special Master of Executive Compensation” and listing his annual salary at $120,830. Judicial Watch has also uncovered a “Notification of Personnel Action” from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management dated June 8, 2009, also establishing Feinberg’s salary level at $120,830.

So why the discrepancy?

Judicial Watch repeatedly attempted to get an answer from Mr. Feinberg. We also repeatedly asked Treasury Press Secretary Mark Paustenbach. We finally got a response after our release hit the wires yesterday. A representative of Mr. Feinberg finally called Judicial Watch and stated that Mr. Feinberg pays his government salary back “every two weeks.” (See his response to our report at the Washington Examiner.)

But regardless of the explanation, we have yet another reason why more of these Obama czars should go through the Senate confirmation process rather than being simply installed into power by Obama. We shouldn’t have to pepper the Obama administration with FOIA requests to know what these czars are doing and how much they’re getting paid to do it. More information about these Obama czars should be part of the public record and transparent to the American people.

(And that’s why we’ve initiated a comprehensive investigation of Obama czars. You can read more about these investigations here.)

By the way, this salary controversy is not the only ongoing Judicial Watch investigation involving Feinberg. We also have a FOIA lawsuit against the Treasury Department to obtain documents related to meetings between Feinberg, AIG Chairman Robert Benmosche, and New York Federal Reserve Bank President William Dudley.

You may recall, in March 2009, AIG disbursed $165 million in taxpayer-funded Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds to its top executives, prompting a massive public backlash. Obama officials reportedly lobbied Congress to insert legislative language allowing the AIG bonus payments and then apparently lied about their knowledge of the payment scheme. The meetings at issue in Judicial Watch’s FOIA request took place in November 2009, just weeks after Feinberg publicly announced pay cuts and salary caps for AIG’s top paid executives.

Like Obama’s other czars, Feinberg wields a tremendous amount of power, yet there is too little transparency regarding his activities. This is a dangerous combination.

First, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) numbers include government spending. So, when the government pumps thousands of billions of dollars into the economy it will look as if GDP is growing.

What’s more, the way the GDP accounts for government spending is totally biased: It assumes that if the government is spending $200,000 on a contractor to repave a road in the middle of nowhere that it will create $200,000 of genuine economic value.  By contrast, GDP measures are tougher on private-sector spending. As my George Mason university colleague Garett Jones explained to me recently “So if Exxon Mobil pays an engineer $200,000 per year, that only shows up in GDP if the engineer finds an extra $200,000 of oil to sell, or builds a new machine that sells for $200,000, something like that.  So our GDP measures of “government spending” are awful–and when the government is in a race to spend money as quickly as possible, these measures are going to be even worse than usual.”

This is an very important point. Especially when we think of  this particular data. First, the current dollar GDP increased $150.3 billion in the third quarter.  In the same time period, the government injected about $174 billion dollars into the economy in the form of personal tax cuts, unemployment assistance, student aid and nutritional assistance, and grants. In other words, the amount of cash the government injected in the economy exceeds the current GDP increase.

Another point: the GDP doesn’t capture any changes in personal stock benefits. This is key because high ranking executive are getting the majority of their compensation from that. That’s got to be looking pretty bad right now. But the GDP doesn’t capture that.

GDP also doesn’t capture Research and Development spending. The cuts in this area were large and unaccounted for. Also not included in the GDP figure:  Pension benefits and the flow of funds accounts of the United States Balance sheet information from the Federal Reserve Board.

This is some of what’s wrong with the numbers. And that’s why I would rather find a bar to drown my sorrows than to celebrate right now.