Barney Frank: control pay of ALL employees

Barack Obama has found a helping hand in his control grab. It’s none other than Congressman Barney Frank (pictured). Yes, that Barney Frank. The Barney Frank that, along with Senator Chris Dodd, got us into the the sub prime mortgage fiasco as reported here.

Two weeks ago the House of Representatives overreacted to the AIG bonuses by passing a bill that would have imposed 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.

This measure is not limited just to those firms that received the largest sums of money, or just to the top 25 or 50 executives of those companies. It applies to all employees of all companies involved, for as long as the government is invested.

This measure would not only apply from now on - it would retroactively apply to all existing contracts and pay arrangements of institutions that have already received funds.

In addition, the bill gives Geithner the authority to decide what pay is "unreasonable" or "excessive." And it directs the Treasury Department to come up with a method to evaluate "the performance of the individual executive or employee to whom the payment relates."

With this measure we will have the Secretary of the Treasury doing the work of the Boards of Directors as well as management of private industry!

The bill passed the Financial Services Committee last week, 38 to 22, on a nearly party-line vote. (All Democrats voted for it, and all Republicans, with the exception of Reps. Ed Royce of California and Walter Jones of North Carolina, voted against it.)

Where is the outrage to this unbelievable power grab? Ninety percent of the main stream media will probably not even report this story.

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