Goverment Control of Your Paycheck

You’ve Been Warned
Posted By Derek Broes On April 3, 2009

Over the past three months we have witnessed some truly amazing movements by the Obama administration. He has proposed more spending than all Presidents in history combined; he has trampled the Constitution by allowing the Treasury to take on a dictator style infringement on private companies, and now the democratically lead Congress has proposed the “Pay for Performance Act” which passed Thursday with even some Republican Congressman voted for it.

This bill essentially allows the Treasury to define “fair pay” for all employees, at any level. Worse, the Treasury would like to be able to take over any company it deemed as important enough to take over regardless of whether or not it had accepted bailout funds. Worse still, the Serve Act proposes to make volunteering for the government mandatory (with pay, of course). Last time I looked, working for pay was called A JOB.

The scariest part of the bill is that while you’re serving as a “volunteer,” you’re prohibited from participating in worship and church activities, political rallies and being involved in a union. In short, your essential freedoms are gone. I keep hearing about Obama being a socialist but, I have to disagree. Based on these measures he appears to more like a person pursuing Communism or Fascism.

Let’s face it; if you wanted to tear down the Republic and install a Communist Oligarchy you would first have to take over all major industries where corporate power resides, then you must get the wealth away from the rich — but how would you do that? Well, you create an even larger economic crisis so the country thinks your massive debt spending is a way to help the country when your real plan is to incur so much debt that the only way to prevent the country from bankruptcy is to impose a tax system that depletes the wealth of the top 1% until we’re all equally “wealthy.” …Well, except for those wealthy people who helped you get there. You know the ones I’m talking about. I don’t mean to HARPO on the subject, but we seemed to have forgotten what we’re protecting. What about the Republic? Is it already gone?

When the government ignores legal contractual obligations because they judge someone’s bonus as unfair the law has been ignored, which means it was violated and this violation occurred at the highest level of government. I’m not saying the AIG bonuses weren’t excessive. My point is, we don’t know what these people did to deserve or NOT to deserve them because this was never mentioned or examined. Maybe some of those people brought in a billion dollars of business and their bonuses were based? Maybe the CEO is the main reason the company is failing? Does that mean that some guy who worked hard to bring in that billion dollars in business shouldn’t be rewarded? But Obama needs a way to regulate pay and the bill proposed doesn’t even stop at executives, it doesn’t even stop at dollar amounts. In fact, it has [2] no specification whatsoever.

So we can all look forward to government cars, government jobs, paid civilian volunteers who watch our every move and the the loss of our ability to reach for our dreams. The sad part is that Obama told us exactly what he was going to do and 52% of you refused to hear what he said. In fact many of you cheered at these things. Let’s remember just of few of the things he said.

1. The Constitution is fundamentally flawed. It only protects the rights of the people but does not allow the government to do anything on your behalf.
2. He wants a civilian Army as large as our military, and as well funded ($650 billion annually).
3. He wants to “spread the wealth.” Oh, don’t pretend you don’t remember Joe the Plumber.

And let’s not forget good ole Reverend Wright whose teachings about America being evil and unequal ring in Obama’s ears. Funny … It’s equality that got Obama elected. Change? Oh yes, there’s change and if we don’t act soon the meaning of hope will have a very different meaning.

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US House begins debating "pay-for-performance" bill
Wed Apr 1, 2009 6:26pm BST

By David Lawder

WASHINGTON, April 1 (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday opened debate on legislation to curb employee pay at financial firms that receive government bailouts, a bill that could supplant an earlier effort to heavily tax executive bonuses.

The "Pay for Performance Act of 2009" would give U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner broad powers to "prohibit unreasonable and excessive compensation and compensation not based on performance standards."

The move comes in the wake of public anger over bonuses paid to employees of the American International Group unit that nearly collapsed the company.

It would replace the bill previously passed by the House of Representatives that aimed to impose a 90 percent tax on bonuses for certain executives at companies that receive taxpayer bailouts. That measure appeared to be losing momentum in the Senate.

The new legislation would allow the Treasury to provide the guidance on what is unreasonable or excessive, but it would be limited to only those companies that have received capital investments from the Treasury's $700 billion financial rescue fund.

"If you've received a capital investment of American tax dollars...to make it through these extraordinary times, there should be common-sense limits on bonuses," said Rep. Ed Perlmutter, a Colorado Democrat. "My constituents in Colorado don't want their hard-earned dollars going to inflate senior executives' life rafts as the ship steers close to the rocks."

The pay-for-performance bill and the earlier measure to tax bonuses are part of a legislative backlash sparked by the March 15 payment by AIG of $165 million in employee retention bonuses to employees of its AIG Financial Products unit, which made bad bets on credit default swaps and complex mortgage-backed securities. The retention payments were decided last year before the company was rescued by the government to the tune of nearly $180 billion, but the Obama administration determined that it was legally bound to make the payments.

The administration has vowed to try to claw back the bonus payments from AIG, in which the government now owns an 80 percent stake.

Some financial firms have said the prospect of compensation limits have made them reluctant to participate in the Treasury program, which could diminish its power to cleanse toxic assets from banks' books and jump-start lending.

Although 85 Republicans voted in favor of the bonus tax, Republicans on Wednesday spoke out against the broader pay-for-performance bill.

Rep. Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican, characterized the bonus tax as a "message" to AIG executives, but said the government was stepping too far into management territory in the current bill.

"It is all we can do to run the government," he said. "And to try to tell these companies how to pay the people that work for them is not the right thing to do."

The House was expected to consider several amendments to the measure before final vote on Wednesday afternoon. (Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Andrea Ricci)

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