Barack Obama, whose net worth has increased massively in the last four years to an estimated $12 million, and who stands to make many more millions from speeches and narcissistic books once his presidency ends, is making a massive sacrifice.

He has offered to return five percent of his salary in sympathy with furloughed government workers. Being the big-hearted guy that he is, this will be for the rest of the year, costing him the princely sum of $15,000.

His gesture is, to put it plainly, pathetic. Both in quantity and quality.

The quantity speaks for itself.

The quality bears further elaboration: Is it not remarkable that we have a president who feels more sympathy for government workers who tend to be overpaid compared to their private sector counterparts and who have more job security and better benefits as well than he has for the many schoolchildren whose visit to the White House has been intentionally torpedoed by an administration hell-bent on making the sequester appear as painful as possible to ordinary Americans?

Also, why will he give it back to the Treasury rather than to a charity? Could it be because Progressives don’t actually believe in private charity, instead thinking that government should take care of Americans’ every need?

For comparison, Mitt Romney, whose net worth is admittedly much higher than President Obama’s but who wasn’t guaranteed millions of dollars in the easiest money a person has ever earned once leaving office, took no salary while serving as Governor of Massachusetts. And when he took over running the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games, he deferred the $280,000 salary, eventually donating to charity the entire $1.4 million earned for that effort.

Barack Obama’s grand gesture, 5 percent of less than year’s salary, or just over one tenth one percent of his current net worth, going to the government rather than to charity, shows just how uncharitable he really is.

What’s funny is that he probably thinks this act makes him look big, when it actually makes him look like the small, petulant man-child he is.