Debbie Bosanek, secretary to mega-investor Warren Buffett, had stayed out of the limelight despite being the poster lady for President Obama’s tax proposals, but she took a star turn last night as she sat with first lady Michelle Obama during the State of the Union Speech.
Bosanek, who has worked for Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway for 37 years and has been his secretary for 20, said before the speech that “I was so excited I couldn’t sleep last night.”
Buffett launched Bosanek’s rise to fame last August 11 when The New York Times published an opinion piece he wrote called “Stop Coddling the Super-Rich.” In the piece he stated that if the government wants to instill the concept of “shared sacrifice,” it should require that he pay a higher portion of his income as taxes than his employees at Berkshire Hathaway, including his secretary.
“What I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office,” he wrote. “Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.”
Bosanek’s Cinderella moment was brief. She planned to catch a crack-of-dawn flight this morning back to Omaha, where the low-key headquarters of Berkshire Hathaway are located.