From today’s Washington Post (H/T Daily Kos)

Congress wanted to guarantee that the $700 billion financial bailout would limit the eye-popping pay of Wall Street executives, so lawmakers included a mechanism for reviewing executive compensation and penalizing firms that break the rules.

But at the last minute, the Bush administration insisted on a one-sentence change to the provision, congressional aides said… Now, however, the small change looks more like a giant loophole, according to lawmakers and legal experts… Lawmakers and legal experts say the change has effectively repealed the only enforcement mechanism in the law dealing with lavish pay for top executives.

“The flimsy executive-compensation restrictions in the original bill are now all but gone,” said Sen. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), ranking Republican on of the Senate Finance Committee.

I’m sure that Senator Bob Corker will be just as outraged by this defense of unearned executive compensation as he is by the UAW’s efforts to protect the wages of its members. Otherwise, the Republicans would, y’know, have a double-standard, one for guys who make hundreds of thousands or millions, another for hourly wage earners.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 15th, 2008 at 2:44 pm and is filed under The Political Mindscape. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.