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Pay for Performance Act

Floor Speech

By: Jim Himes
By: Jim Himes
Date: April 1, 2009
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Employment and Affirmative Action Government Budget and Spending

PAY FOR PERFORMANCE ACT -- (House of Representatives - April 01, 2009)

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Mr. HIMES. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of H.R. 1664. This is a commonsense measure to protect American taxpayers by making sure that their hard-earned dollars are used carefully and wisely in our efforts to stabilize our financial institutions. Let us be very clear about one thing: No one is happy that the TARP was necessary. We have far better uses for our money than stabilizing the very institutions that helped drive this economy into a ditch, but into a ditch it went, and we need to pull it out.

President Bush, Secretary Paulson and this very House decided in October of last year that we would pump billions of dollars into these firms. Now, like it or not, the dollars are there. So the only question that matters is: Should we look after those dollars? Should we, as the Representatives of the American people, look after their dollars to make sure that they are used wisely? The answer to that question must be ``yes.''

H.R. 1664 says one thing to TARP recipients: Pay your people, but do so reasonably and according to their performance. Pay reasonably and according to performance. The bill asks the Secretary of the Treasury to develop guidelines for those things. It does not ask the 435 Members of Congress but, rather, Treasury.

I expect that compensation committees and boards of directors around this country will be very interested in those guidelines because they know that it is their job to craft reasonable, performance-based compensation for their companies and for their shareholders. They have a fiduciary obligation to their shareholders. Like it or not, the American people are now shareholders, and we, as their Representatives have a clear fiduciary obligation to the American taxpayer. We have a clear interest in aligning the interests of the employees in the banks we now own with the interests of the American taxpayers. You do that through performance-based compensation. You do that by supporting this bill that aligns pay with performance.

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