Providing for Consideration of Motions to Suspend the Rules

Floor Speech

PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF MOTIONS TO SUSPEND THE RULES -- (House of Representatives - March 19, 2009)

Mr. SHERMAN. Let me set the record straight, particularly with regard to the comments of Mr. Dreier from California. The TARP bill is the one that provided the bailouts. It contained highly ineffectual, giant loophole-containing limits on executive compensation.

Not surprisingly, those provisions did not prevent the outrageous AIG bonuses, nor do they prevent million-dollar a month salaries. It is the TARP bill which should have limited and pretended to limit executive compensation to those who got money from the TARP bill. The gentleman from California voted for the TARP bill, as I understand it. I voted against it, twice.

Then in January we considered a bill that had little or nothing to do with the TARP bailout. It, thankfully, included some effort to control bonuses. That was in addition to the restrictions found in the TARP bill. It was a step in the right direction, but it was not enough to stop AIG bonuses. To attack people for voting to make the TARP Program a little better, and to have those attacks come from somebody who voted for the TARP bill, seems just a little outrageous.

But what about the bill we are going to consider today? It's a good step, but it ain't going to get us where we need to go. Because the bill we will consider today allows for half-million-dollar a month salaries, million-dollar a month salaries, without any taxation, without any limitation, without any effect from this legislation, just as those million-dollar a month salaries were unaffected by the TARP bill and by the stimulus bill.

We need to come to this floor next week and improve the bill that I hope we pass today--to deal with all executive compensation, not just bonuses. Because if you think people are angry today at the AIG bonuses, you see how angry they get when we tell them we've solved the problem and then they find out some people at bailed-out firms are getting $500,000 a month salaries. Because they couldn't get bonuses, they went to the employer and said, Well, better make it $1 million a month.

We have got to deal with the entire compensation package.

The bill we'll consider today also allows unlimited commissions. Now, you could argue that maybe certain commissions shouldn't be limited. But if you don't define the word commission, you can be sure everybody on Wall Street will rename what would have been a bonus into a commission. And it will not be taxed under the bill we are going to deal with today.

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