Government To The Extreme

What do you call it when the government goes into a business and resets all the salaries for you, even if you already have contractual obligations that you have committed to? It certainly isn't the form of government our Constitution was crafted for. In fact, it sounds downright...hmmm....what's the word I'm looking for? Starts with a C or maybe an F? Oh, well. I'm sure it'll come to me soon enough. Whatever it is, it's certainly being embraced by the Democrat majority in Washington, led by the Spitter in Chief, Barney Frank. They're actually planning on going into private companies and setting the salaries themselves, from top to bottom. The government will now determine what employees should be paid.

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.

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."

The bill passed the Financial Services Committee last week, 38 to 22, on a nearly party-line vote. (All Democrats voted for it, and all Republicans, with the exception of Reps. Ed Royce of California and Walter Jones of North Carolina, voted against it.)

Any bets that this abomination passes and gets signed into law by the Great Leader? He's already made steps to take over other industries. It's that kind of world now, not one to be proud of. And these people wonder why guns and ammo are flying off the shelves.

Technorati Tags
Barney Frank, Libertarian, News, Obama