On The Situation Room, Mitch McConnell, now suddenly cares about executive compensation, in this interview with Wolf Blitzer:
Blitzer: There were efforts over the past several months as all of these various bailouts were going through. At least some wanted to impose some caps on salaries for CEO's and top executives of these major corporations, these major financial institutions who were receiving tax payer money. But a lot of that just simply died. Why?
McConnell: Well there's always been a big debate about just how much you can micro-manage the company and keep it profitable but the cold hard reality is, and the message to American business is if you want tax payer dollars, if you're going to have the government as your partner, you're going to have to operate in a different sort of way. I'm among those who would like to see not very many companies with the government as a partner.
But if you're going to have the government as a partner you can't operate in the same way. Obviously AIG is trying to have it both ways and I want to know directly from the Secretary of the Treasury why they got thirty billion dollars a mere two weeks ago, apparently with no strings attached.
Here's McConnell back on Feb. 4th:
On Monday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., suggested he doesn't like the idea of limiting executive compensation.
"What you have to do, it strikes me, is have some kind of parameters that don't have the government basically running the private business," McConnell said, according to ABC News' Jonathan Karl. "It is a tough challenge. I think we are all appalled by these -- some of these executive salary arrangements and bonus arrangements and perks and all the rest. On the other hand, I really don't want the government to take over these businesses and start telling them everything about what they can do. Then you truly have nationalized the business. So it is a delicate dance to try to prevent blatant abuses and still not have the government as a result of taking an equity position in the government telling them, for example, you can't pay dividends or you can't -- I mean, things that are just ordinary business practices. We have to resist the temptation to basically dictate to these businesses how to run every aspect of their operation.”
As noted as the Huffington Post back in February, the leaders of the GOP were railing against President Obama's proposal to limit executive compensation at a half a million dollars.
