McCaskill Pushes for Salary Cap for Bailout Recipients

[Leo The Cleo]

http://snafu-ed.blogspot.com/2009/01/mccaskill-pushes-for-salary-cap-for.html

One day after President Barack Obama tore into Wall Street for its "shameful" $18 billion in 2008 bonuses, the Senate chimed in with a "salary cap" bill, aimed at limiting compensation for those companies accepting government bailout money.

The bill, the Chief Executive Officer Pay Act of 2009, introduced by Sen. Claire McCaskill, (D-MO), no employee of one of those companies would be allowed to make more than the president of the United States. That would place a cap on salaries of $400,000.

On the floor of the Senate, McCaskill said:

"We have a bunch of idiots on Wall Street that are kicking sand in the face of the American taxpayer. They don't get it. These people are idiots. You can't use taxpayer money to pay out $18 billion in bonuses."

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani defended corporate bonuses Friday, saying that cutting them will result in job cuts. On CNN's American Morning, he said:

"If you somehow take that bonus out of the economy, it really will create unemployment. It means less spending in restaurants, less spending in department stores, so everything has an impact."

What Giuliani fails to get is that those bonuses go to very few people, so they really do little to stimulate the economy.

McCaskill added:

"Going forward, you want taxpayers to help you survive, you want the people at your financial institution to have a job tomorrow, then you're going to have to limit everyone's pay at your company to the same salary that the president of the United States makes. Is that so unreasonable? It's 8 times the median household income in the United States of America, $400,000 a year. I don't think that sounds like a bad deal. Should these people be making more than the President of the United States? Now really, should they? They should not be making more than the President of the United States.

"So every executive, going forward, cannot make more than $400,000 a year. And they'd have to limit that executive compensation for everyone in their company until they pay back every dime to the taxpayers.

"Now once they're off the public dole, once the taxpayers aren't footing the bill, then it's not as much our business what they get paid. But right now they're on the hook to us. And they owe us something other than a fancy waste basket and $50 million jet. They owe us some common sense. And if any of them think it's a hardship to take the salary of the President of the United States, I dare them to say it out loud right now."

I personally see nothing wrong with this, as a taxpayer. We're footing the bill for them, and receiving no equity in their companies, after all.