12-02-2008, 06:39 PM
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Dubbed Queen Bee by Annie
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Join Date: Nov 2007
Userid: 26 Location: A holler in Tennessee
Posts: 5,742
Rep Power: 8
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Executive Pay Cuts
I liked this article because the author brings up an excellent point, that the CEOs and other executives that have run their companies into the ground and are seeking bailouts are mirroring the actions of our own elected representatives who are running our country into the ground. We've learned recently that these CEOs are ferried around by private jets, but until I read this article I didn't realize that Nancy Pelosi also uses a private jet courtesy of the taxpayers. As people lose their savings, their homes, and their jobs, I haven't seen members of Congress lose any of their perks. Something has to give and it needs to start at the top in order for there to be any meaningful change.
Quote:
Executive Pay Cuts
by Patrick Mulligan
Government officials lecturing anyone on ethics, greed or financial responsibility is as laden with irony as the latest appropriations bill is with pork barrel spending.
With the collapse of several of America's financial institutions along with the impending doom of Detroit's "Big Three" automakers, and the subsequent taxpayer bailouts, buyouts, loans and "stimulus packages" being pushed by both Congress and the President, renewed blame and outrage have been directed towards "corporate greed", and corporate executives in particular. Businessmen are being served up as the very personification of avarice; the proverbial golden parachute being the ubiquitous symbol of the evils of capitalism run amok. Raging lawmakers have called for these evil fat cats to take massive pay and benefit cuts, if not lose their jobs altogether.
The latest example was the GM, Ford and Chrysler executives who traveled to Capitol Hill to ask for a 25 billion-dollar-a-piece taxpayer-secured bailout loan. Lawmakers were outraged. Not because the automakers would come to them with their hands out waiting to get from taxpayers what they cannot get from the marketplace, but because the executives arrived on private jets instead of making the thousand mile round trip in a clean-burning hybrid vehicle, or taking commercial flights. After scolding from congressmen, the CEOs of GM and Ford have decided to return or sell off portions of their private fleet of jets. This as AIG's CEO has announced that he will accept (largely symbolically) a reduced salary of just $1 this year.
Ever thinking of the little guy, Congress and the news media see this as a step in the right direction. But what if the government were held to the same standard as private management? If the government were a private company it would be too broke and uncreditworthy to continue operating. Consider: during the just-completed 2008 fiscal year, the government ran a record annual budget deficit of about 450 billion dollars; the total national debt is over 10 trillion dollars; the national debt has not declined since 1969; both the Government Accountability Office and the Office of Management and Budget have stated that the current fiscal position of the United States government is "unsustainable." Yet who among the political class – the very managers who remorselessly oversee the financial train wreck in their own institution – has called for a pay or benefit cut for the President or Congress, let alone actually taken one? Which officials have curtailed travel by private jet, forgone their annual salary, or cancelled scheduled retreats and vacations? Certainly not Nancy Pelosi, who upon becoming Speaker of the House was granted, ostensibly for security purposes, a military C-40 "flying office" jumbo jet in which to commute back and forth from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. Certainly not Senator Chris Dodd, who received a privileged loan from now-defunct lender Countrywide Financial even as he was pontificating about Wall Street greed from his seat on the Senate banking committee. Certainly not the collective Congress, which has not failed to approve its own annual "cost of living" pay raise for 8 of the last 10 years. Certainly not the President – any president, past or present – who has never agreed to accept a $1 annual salary when the government in his charge has struggled financially and had to borrow from the public coffers. Government officials lecturing anyone on ethics, greed or financial responsibility is as laden with irony as the latest appropriations bill is with pork barrel spending. "He who is without sin . . ." as they say.
So in a show of good faith, I would like to see our federal leaders take the lead in fiscal accountability by refusing to accept a salary until, as they've demanded of the automakers seeking a bailout, they can demonstrate a plan to bring their enterprise into the black and repay their debt. Until then, Congress should just be grateful that, like the fat cat executives that they castigate, their pay is not determined by their performance, and avoid drawing undue attention to the fact with their hypocrisy.
Intellectual Conservative Politics and Philosophy
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"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty." Thomas Jefferson
Walter Mondale: "George Bush doesn't have the manhood to apologize." George Bush: "Well, on the manhood thing, I'll put mine up against his any time." 
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