President Barack Obama has proposed a cap on compensation for bank executives at $500,000. Wall Street bankers, after their recent bailout by the Congress, took $18 billion in bonuses, secured private jets and held gaudy conferences.
Since it was taxpayer’s money that permitted that kind of extravagance most of us, I daresay, would agree with Obama’s position.
But many Republicans in Congress dislike the idea. Columnist Ryan Grim is a bit stronger, he wrote “Republicans hate the idea—a position [that] puts them uncomfortably on the side of people currently about as popular as child-porn produces and subprime mortgage brokers.”
Senator John Kyl, Senate Minority Whip (R-AZ) blames the “tone deaf” bankers for creating the political environment that allows Obama to call for a cap. Kyle doesn’t like it because it puts the United States government in a position of “telling a company what it can pay its employees.” Senator Mel Martinez (R-FL) agrees with Kyl. So does Senator James Inhofe (R-OK).
Democrats contend that banks that take government money must accept any rules the government imposes on use of the money.
And it isn’t a concept that the GOP doesn’t support—when it is applied to welfare recipients. “We demand that welfare recipients do an honest day’s work for their checks. And now since President Obama laid down the law Wednesday, we demand that the guys who ran our banking system into the ground abide by our pay scales in return for bailing them out,” wrote Harold Meyerson in his column Friday.
“After all, what’s the moral distinction between welfare recipients and the wizards of Wall Street, other than that the welfare recipients aren’t the ones responsible for tanking the global economy?,” Meyerson asks?
One Democrat thinks the corporate welfare recipients should have to prove they actually work 40 hours a week with a supervisor—the Board of Directors—for example certifying they do. I’m not so sure I’d pick the Board of Directors. They didn’t direct their corporate officers very well. Jet rides wouldn’t count toward the 40 hours. Neither would reading the Wall Street Journal.
If they fudge, it was suggested, cut off their TARP funds and make them pay back any government money they received.
That is an idea I think I can get behind. So can Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS).
But Senator Inhofe can’t see it. “It’s still government running business,” he said. Senator Bob Bennett (R-UT) isn’t so sure. “You run the risk of having a brain drain at the bank of their top talent,” Bennett worries.
On the other hand Senator Bennett one might conclude that draining the kind of brains we’ve found in banks lately might be a good idea. Perhaps we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in had those brains been drained long ago. Let’em work someplace else, if they can find a job.
Dislike of government intervention into business is a Republican root belief, like “cutting taxes.” Republican Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) says, “Government does not do a good job running private institutions.” He has a point. Government doesn’t do a very good job of running governments.
One successful tact used by Republican Senators Mitch McConnell, Minority Leader, and esteemed economist, Senator John McCain, won’t even respond to the issue. Better to keep one’s mouth shut than display ignorance.
But there are some Republican Senators who don’t seem to think that Government intervention is necessarily out of line. Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK), Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) have expressed some support for government’s control of executive salaries of banks that take bailout money. That may shock some staunch conservatives. It did me.
But one Republican Senator, drew upon all the empirical evidence he could, reviewed the depths of historical precedent and then uttered his reasoned conclusion, “In theory, I don’t like it. I just don’t like the government telling private industry how to run their businesses,” said Senator John Thune (R-SD). I seems fairly clear that Senator Thune has not been victimized by any of those banks. Or, maybe he thought about his South Dakota constituents, because fifteen minutes later he changed his mind saying, “You know what? I think I’m for that” but referring to President Obama, “I don’t disagree with what he’s doing.”
Oops. Senator Thune may just have fallen off the Republican train and turned into a RINO! [Huffington Post]
Related posts:
- Cap on corporate executive pay not in the stimulus?!!!
- Geithner: No Plans to Cap Executive Compensation
- Republican Congressman Dean Heller’s Dilemma
- Republican Bill Parsons running against Harry Reid
- Fact Check: Republican claims of Democrats slipping in earmarks in Stimulus Bill for frivolous projects aren’t true.
