Salary Caps & Pork

Salary Caps & Pork

Obama wants $500,000 salary caps for executives whose companies are getting bailed out. Ordinarily, I would not be sympathetic to the government setting salary caps. As I mentioned a few months back, Congressional action in 1993 to limit executive salaries encouraged more use of stock options--and thus encouraged short-term thinking, such as layoffs to improve the next quarter's stock price. But if a private corporation doesn't want to be subject to stupid governmental rules like this one, it can refuse the bailout. If a corporation is well run, I don't particularly care how much the CEO and other officers make. But if it is run so badly that it needs the taxpayers to bail it out, too bad.

I'm glad to see that the tax break for poor starving Hollywood went down to defeat in the Senate, largely because of Republicans, but a few Democrats as well. Even aside from the absurdity of giving a tax break for a particular, highly profitable industry, you could almost get the impression that Republicans in Congress are beginning to realize that they have to play hardball (as the Democrats have always done). Why reward an industry that works hard on degrading American society, promotes homosexuality, creates a false image of America to much of the rest of the world, and overwhelmingly funds Democrats? Just because it is a profitable business doesn't mean that Republicans have to give them any favors.