Posted on 01/30/2009 11:55:19 AM PST by Red in Blue PA
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- One day after President Barack Obama ripped Wall Street executives for their "shameful" decision to hand out $18 billion in bonuses in 2008, Congress may finally have had enough.
An angry U.S. senator introduced legislation Friday to cap compensation for employees of any company that accepts federal bailout money. Under the terms of a bill introduced by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, no employee would be allowed to make more than the president of the United States.
Obama's current annual salary is $400,000.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
But federal employees at the senior executive level do receive performance bonuses annually. And Congress raised its salary again this year.
Wow! One guy with some common sense here.
If that is the case, then why are you all for the Government making such a decision?
I would keep the Government as far away from this as possible.
I would love that!
And here's how you do that. Buy a few shares in a company in which you want to influence how executive compensation is performed. Go to a shareholder's meeting. Advance your proposal for shareholder vote. If the shareholders vote in favor of setting up a scheme whereby they directly vote for compensation for the CEO, then that's the way it will be.
BECAUSE THE COMPANIES ACCEPTED TAXPYER MONIES!
I just sent Neal Boortz this email. It’s something that’s been grinding on me about Neal for more than a few years.
Neal, I’ve repeatedly heard you say that the salaries and bonuses for these corporate CEOs — even those who WRECK their companues — should be without limit or they’d leave the company and go elsewhere, even to a foreign firm.
Neal, MOST foreign firms DO NOT pay those huge salaries and bonuses.
And MANY of those fat checks are approved by interlocked boards of directors who sit on multiple boards and take pretty good care of each other and, in too many cases, the PUBLIC SHAREHOLDERS BE DAMNED! Does the phrase “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” ring a bell?
Neal, we’ve been on the same side on many issues. It was your embrace of the early national retail sales tax that led be to Vic Krohn, Neal White and my 3 year participation as a National Board member of CATS. You know I’m a pretty solid free-enterprise, private property guy. But, with all due respect, the current system of corporate compensation has been hijacked by the good old boys network.
If we cannot get it back into some sort of balance WITHOUT government’s “help,” the gang now infesting Washington will do it for us — and we probably WILL NOT like the outcome.
Regards,
Dick
And it's the commies in the DEM congress changing the rules and pulling the strings
The whole notion of bailouts should have never happened.
He who gives the money has the control don't you get it?
This was planned and you're rooting for the string pullers, you fell hook line a sinker!!
Doesn’t that make sense as a law? Why should I, as a shareholder, have to fly across the country to ask for a provision to be voted on that I am allowed some say in what the execs at MY company make?
Makes no sense.
Make it law.
In April 2002, McCaskill married St. Louis businessman Joseph Shepard. Shepard had business interests in the nursing home industry. Because as state auditor McCaskill was responsible for auditing the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, which regulates the state’s nursing home system.
They certainly aren’t idiots.
The ENTIRE point of Bush and Paulson pushing this through hard and fast in September was to allow Bankers their very own Welfare and Boondoggle.
The obfuscation of this issue by Paulson and his minions testifies strongly to the fact that this was the very intention all along.
Idiots, no sir, no way, highly effective schemers watching out for Number One.
Bush’s Boondoggle. He signed it.
But this proposal has no chance. Bankers ain’t giving up squat.
“you fell hook line a sinker!! “
I was never for it.
But if it must be, why should there be no rules attached?
The compensation committees are accountable to the Board of Directors who are accountable to the shareholders. The compensation committee often includes some Board Members and the CEO.
Excellent letter. That is precisely how I, and most everyone I know, feels.
Thanks.
Big difference between 99% of the bonuses and 99% of the money.
The bonus/commission structure is the way these guys work.
What private enterprise does with their money is their business and none of the governments. This is just another step towards communizing America. Get the frickin' government out of our business and keep them out. As for congress getting on their high horse about pay, didn't those SOBs just vote themselves another pay raise? Until they are willing to cut their pay down to about 50 percent of what it is now they can just STFU!
Let's give credit where credit is due. Running their businesses into bankruptcy and going to the government, hat in hand, for a multi-billion dollar bailout left them wide open for this kind of intervention.
Yes, in most cases they are and if they aren’t, then the company deserves to fail.
If you go to the government for billions of dollars to bail you out of your bad business decisions then why shouldn't they tell you that?
I am for this too- if you accept socialist bailout you give up captialist perks.
you FAILED at you job so you should NOT get paid from taxpayer bailout money
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