Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Beyond AIG: A Bill to Let Big Government Set Your Salary

The Liberal assault on personal freedom, free-market capitalism and liberty is in full swing!

President Obama, in a blatant abuse on his constitutional Executive power, felt it necessary to fire GM CEO Rick Wagoner this week.

Now, a bill has been introduced in Congress, HR 1664 Grayson-Himes Pay For Performance Act of 2009, which aims to cap pay which is not performance based and any and all employees who work for companies receiving bailout dollars.

Huh?

To amend the executive compensation provisions of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 to prohibit unreasonable and excessive compensation and compensation not based on performance standards.


Tim Geithner unveiled a plan last week, designed to give Treasury Department the ability to take over financial institutions at the Secretary's choosing.

I have no problems with setting restrictions on companies which receive government/tax payer dollars, but what is disturbing about this legistlation is that it affects ALL employees at these companies and this it gives Geithner some pretty vague new powers.

The measure is not limited just to those firms that received the largest sums of money, or just to the top 25 or 50 executives of those companies. It applies to all employees of all companies involved, for as long as the government is invested. And it would not only apply going forward, but also retroactively to existing contracts and pay arrangements of institutions that have already received funds.

In addition, the bill gives Geithner the authority to decide what pay is "unreasonable" or "excessive." And it directs the Treasury Department to come up with a method to evaluate "the performance of the individual executive or employee to whom the payment relates."


All of this continues the Obama Administration's war on Wall Street. It's a power grab to redistribute wealth, penalize the successful and establish a communistic "equality" among Americans.

Regulation = control and power.

Team "O" wants to destroy free market capitalism. There is ample proof of Obama's war on investors. Welcome to The United Socialist States of America (USSA).

Washington Examiner reports:

It was nearly two weeks ago that the House of Representatives, acting in a near-frenzy after the disclosure of bonuses paid to executives of AIG, passed a bill that would impose a 90 percent retroactive tax on those bonuses. Despite the overwhelming 328-93 vote, support for the measure began to collapse almost immediately. Within days, the Obama White House backed away from it, as did the Senate Democratic leadership. The bill stalled, and the populist storm that spawned it seemed to pass.

But now, in a little-noticed move, the House Financial Services Committee, led by chairman Barney Frank, has approved a measure that would, in some key ways, go beyond the most draconian features of the original AIG bill. The new legislation, the "Pay for Performance Act of 2009," would impose government controls on the pay of all employees -- not just top executives -- of companies that have received a capital investment from the U.S. government. It would, like the tax measure, be retroactive, changing the terms of compensation agreements already in place. And it would give Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner extraordinary power to determine the pay of thousands of employees of American companies.

The purpose of the legislation is to "prohibit unreasonable and excessive compensation and compensation not based on performance standards," according to the bill's language. That includes regular pay, bonuses -- everything -- paid to employees of companies in whom the government has a capital stake, including those that have received funds through the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

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