This Biden Cabinet Member Has An Estimated Net Worth Of $0

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland overcame numerous obstacles to become the first Native American cabinet member. Her net worth is the lowest among those in Biden’s cabinet.

Even among a diverse group where many members of President Joe Biden’s cabinet did not grow up wealthy, Deb Haaland’s path to her position as Interior Secretary is extraordinary. She’s spoken before about experiencing homelessness, raising a child as a single mother, living off food stamps and remaining sober for more than 30 years. In 2018 she became one of the first two Native American women to ever be elected to Congress, and in March, she again made history as the first Native American to serve in the cabinet and lead the interior department

“I don’t have a savings account, right? I mean that is—that’s real,” Haaland said in an interview with the Today show in 2019. “I just feel like there has to be more people like me in office who can say, ‘I know what it’s like to be on food stamps. I know what it’s like to find every free program to put my kid through so that she has opportunities.’”

Today, Forbes estimates Haaland’s personal net worth at zero dollars, based on a review of her financial disclosure and public records. Federal appointees and officials are required to list nearly all assets, liabilities and sources of income on disclosure reports that the Office of Government Ethics collects but does not audit. Haaland’s filing, which she submitted in December 2020, is almost blank. She lists two items: student loans worth no more than $50,000, and a $175 annual tribal payment. 

Filers aren’t expected to disclose the value of any personal residences they own, which can often make up a significant portion of someone’s net worth, but Forbes also could not find any record that Haaland owns a house. Voter registration records show that she and her partner reside at a New Mexico home worth more than $1 million, according to a county assessment, but Haaland doesn’t own the place. Officials also don’t have to list the value of their Thrift Savings Plans, which are essentially 401(k)s for government employees. Haaland may have a small checking account, or another type of cash account—filers do not have to disclose those if their balances are $5,000 or less. American Indians or Alaskan Native people had the highest rates of unbanked households of any race or ethnicity in the U.S., according to a 2019 FDIC survey of banking and financial services use. Spokespeople for Haaland at the Interior Department declined to comment on her net worth.

Deb Haaland Vs. David Bernhardt

Before heading up the Interior Department, Bernhardt was a highly-paid lobbyist with clients like Statoil and Sempra Energy from the fossil fuel industry.

Haaland, who is a member of the Pueblo of Laguna, is a 35th generation New Mexican. Haaland’s maternal grandparents were taken away from their families when they were both 8 years old and forced to stay into boarding schools for years as part of government “assimilation policies,” Haaland recently shared in a Washington Post opinion article. Some of those efforts were led by the Interior Department, which Haaland now leads. Haaland’s father was a Norwegian American in the Marines, while her mother was a Native American in the Navy who also worked as a civil servant at the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Throughout her childhood, Haaland traveled from military base to military base, spending summers with her maternal grandparents in their village on Laguna Pueblo, an area that recent data show has poverty rates above national levels.

Haaland says she developed her work ethic as a high schooler inside an Albuquerque bakery. “The bakery was my very first job,” Haaland said at a Washington Post event in December 2020. “And even though I felt like my parents had taught me a work ethic, it was honed by Mr. Zinn in the bakery.” The job reportedly paid $1.95 an hour but helped Haaland prepare for a role in national politics. “It takes a tremendous work ethic to run for office, no matter who you are,” Haaland said. “I feel like every experience I’ve had during my lifetime has helped me, you know, to be where I am today.”

In 1994 Haaland got her bachelor’s degree from the University of New Mexico and also gave birth to her only child. Haaland also started and ran her own business, called Pueblo Salsa. She told Albuquerque Business First in 2014: “I had a commercial kitchen there and bought all my chile locally and would drive to northern New Mexico and buy red chile. It was a small business, but I sold in a lot of grocery stores, in mom-and-pop shops and chile shops.” Still, it wasn’t easy. In a statement supporting funding for Native American entrepreneurs last year, Haaland, who is now 60, highlighted her own challenges, “Native Americans’ entrepreneurial spirit can break cycles of poverty, but for far too long, key economic resources have not been available to Native businesses. When I was running my salsa company, I could only imagine how much easier it would have been if I had access to business incubation support.”

Haaland told Albuquerque Business First that she sold her business to attend law school at the University of New Mexico. “She very much sticks out in my mind as just a very grounded, community-grounded student, very respectful,” says University of New Mexico law professor John LaVelle, a member of the Santee Sioux Nation. “Not only was she excellent as a student in my classes, but she also was a mover and shaker in terms of activism in the student body.” 

Another one of Haaland’s professors, Kip Bobroff, explained that in addition to studying and raising her child, Haaland also found time to work on legislation at the New Mexico state house, where she got involved in passing a law that for the first time provided in-state college tuition to members of American Indian nations in New Mexico, regardless of their residency. “One of the things that has impressed me about Deb throughout her career is that she is simultaneously committed to dismantling inequities of the past but doing it in a collaborative, thoughtful way,” Bobroff said.

Haaland graduated from law school in 2006 and got involved with the Democratic Party. She served as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 2008 and later became chair of the New Mexico state Democratic Party. She also had leadership roles as a San Felipe Pueblo tribal administrator, and she joined the board for the Laguna Development Corporation, which is a Pueblo of Laguna owned business that manages casinos and retail operations.

In 2014 Haaland ran for office as lieutenant governor in New Mexico. She lost, but that didn’t deter her from announcing her candidacy for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2017. The year before she launched her $2.2 million (amount raised) Congressional campaign, a financial disclosure shows that she had income of about $41,000 from various sources including, about $28,000 from the San Felipe Casino and about $9,300 from the state of New Mexico for unemployment. Her first year in the House she got a raise to $174,000. Today her annual salary as cabinet secretary exceeds $200,000 a year—a sum that could allow her to pay off the remaining student loan debt soon enough.

“If an Indigenous woman from humble beginnings can be confirmed as secretary of the interior,” Haaland said during her confirmation hearing with the Senate. “Our country holds promise for everyone.”