Oh, SNAP! The House of Representatives voted today on a bill that would tax any executive bonuses from companies who accept(ed) more than $5 billion in federal bailout money - to the tune of 90 percent. (It's still got to clear the slightly more deliberative Senate before it becomes law.)
The move was no doubt prompted by the news this week that execs at AIG - including several in the division that caused the firm's problems to begin with - were getting $165 million in bonuses. Or, as Rep. Barney Frank called them, "people 'who had to be bribed not to abandon the company' they had nearly ruined."
While I was marveling at the bill's bipartisan support and wondering if this was legal, I recollected a recent appearance by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on one of the Sunday talk shows, where Newt warned that any tax hikes on the wealthy would discourage the best and the brightest (as we know the very rich to be, always) from using their collective acumen to make money that would then trickle down to us drooling college-dropout and raised-by-single-moms masses. That sounded kinda funny to me...I had trouble picturing myself sitting around coming up with surefire million-dollar ideas, only to conclude that the taxes weren't worth it, so, oh well, I should just go back to unemployed beer pong.
Republicans in Congress can play at populism all they want - but ridiculous executive salaries are a direct outgrowth of the Reaganomics notion that the rich have a moral obligation to get richer, no matter what the cost to anyone else.
1 comment:
Great post, especially the links. But don't give Newt all the credit for defending the Bonus Babies. His Royal Asshead, Rush the Repulsive also thinks the bonuses are perfectly fair.
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