The Universe Exists for My Amusement

Barney Frank has created, from the ashes of the AIG Bonus scandal, a new bill to control salaries of any company that receives money from TARP or any other bailout program. It’s only a short step from there until the US government starts to control your salary as well.

Socialist whip: Prepare to feel it hitting you in the ass in the upcoming years.

Beyond AIG, A Bill to let Big Government Set Your Salary.

It was nearly two weeks ago that the House of Representatives, acting in a near-frenzy after the disclosure of bonuses paid to executives of AIG, passed a bill that would impose a 90 percent retroactive tax on those bonuses. Despite the overwhelming 328-93 vote, support for the measure began to collapse almost immediately. Within days, the Obama White House backed away from it, as did the Senate Democratic leadership. The bill stalled, and the populist storm that spawned it seemed to pass.

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.

Note that Big Brother has thought about limiting the amount of money you can make in the past during World War II. Here’s an excerpt from a letter by Franklin Roosevelt in 19 – Letter to the House Ways and Means Committee on Salary Limitation.

In a message to the Congress on April 27, 1942, I stated:

“Discrepancies between low personal incomes and very high personal incomes should be lessened; and I therefore believe that in time of this grave national danger, when all excess income should go to win the war, no American citizen ought to have a net income, after he has paid his taxes, of more than $25,000 a year.”

Thereafter the Treasury advised the committee:

“To implement the President’s proposal, the Treasury now recommends the enactment of a 100 percent war supertax on that part of the net income after regular income tax which exceeds a personal exemption of $25,000 . . . .It is recommended that for the purpose of the supertax, joint returns be made mandatory and that a personal exemption of $25,000 for each spouse be allowed, or in effect $50,000 for the married couple.”