McCaskill proposes maximum wage for TARP recipients!!! Updated [3x] with video by Tin hat mafia Fri Jan 30, 2009 at 03:56:17 PM PST
I just came across this, and my jaw hit the floor! Some of us on the fringes have been talking about the concept of a maximum wage for a while, but this is phenomenal timing!
Claire McCaskill this afternoon proposed a stunning bill that would limit Wall Street Execs who accept TARP funding to not making more than the president of the United States.
McCaskill took to the Senate floor on Friday to put an end to the surrealism. In a bill that came to the surprise of reporters, her colleagues, and the White House alike -- there was no coordination with the Obama administration, she said -- the Missouri Democrat called for compensation for employees of bailout recipients to be capped at $400,000 a year.
"They don't get it," McCaskill said on the floor. "These people are idiots. You can't use taxpayer money to pay out $18-billion in bonuses... What planet are these people on?"
What planet indeed. Think of it, if you take taxpayer money to prop up your corporation, you can't make more in annual compensation than the president!
When asked about the bill:
MCCASKILL: I've been mad for a while, when first there was talk -- even within weeks of when we passed the initial half of the TARP money, [there were] rumors about bonuses, the fact that too many of these guys were holding unto the jobs even though they were running these companies into the ground. Reality didn't seem to be the order of the day. This culture, this idea, that these guys are entitled not just to their jobs but to excessive compensation, even when their companies were in moments of extinction because of the decisions they had made, just seemed unreal to me.
While I am not sure if this could be worked out to include incentive/bonus pay, I think that it is an important first step.
Let's do like the dude from Network....go to the windows, open them, and shout at the top of your lungs...
[Update]
...and if any of them think its a hardship to take the salary of the President of the United States, I dare them to say so out loud right now.