[hoightoider]

galveston,
The president does not have the authority to cap the pay of senators and he and his White House senior staff have already agreed to no salary increases. Sorry to give you such disappointing facts. Now, won't you join me in supporting our president?

[excon]

And if he's going to limit executive pay, what will be the consequences for going over? What, you don't think there will be consequences?

Hello again, Steve:

The excesses I'm speaking of, and Obama too, go WAYYYY beyond executive compensation. Frankly, I wouldn't be messing with that...

I'm talking about much bigger fish than that...

I'm talking about the Bush administration raising the usury laws, making bankruptcy harder, letting the banks charge whatever they wanted in interest and letting them change the rules of the game ANYTIME they wanted to, letting the insurance company's into the examining room with you, eliminating laws that would have stopped AIG from every getting too big to fail, eliminating laws that prevented the creation of things like credit default swaps... Things like that.

excon

[tomder55]

For the record credit default swaps precede the Bush administration .

Credit Default Swaps were invented in 1997 by a team working for JPMorgan Chase.Credit Default Swaps became largely exempt from regulation by the SEC and the CFTC with the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which was also responsible for the Enron loophole. President Clinton signed the bill into Law on December 21, 2000.For that matter the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act was in 1998 ;also under Clinton's watch. The sub prime mortgages ? Also a product of the pressure that came from the Clintoon HUD .

[hoightoider]

"for the record credit default swaps preceed (sic) the Bush administration."

Tomder,
I am certain a man as objective as yourself meant to say President Clinton signed your referenced legislation after being passed by a REPUBLICAN house and senate. Don't worry about your slip up, we all have a bad day now and then.

[speechlesstx]

For the record, Rep. John J. LaFalce (D-NY) was a cosponsor in the House, Sen. Thomas Harkin (D-IA)and Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD) were cosponsors in the Senate. 157 Democrats and 133 Republicans voted for the appropriations bill in the House and the Senate passed it by unanimous consent. Bill Clinton, the "Decider" at the time, the guy who's desk the buck stopped at, signed it into law.

[speechlesstx]

More on the new era of government transparency.

An omnibus lands bill that was actually a land-grab bill failed to pass the House last week. So what are they doing? Via E&E Daily:

Earlier this month, the House fell two votes shy of passing the bill under suspension of the rules, a maneuver that shields legislation from amendment or a motion to recommit but requires a two-thirds majority for passage. Senate leaders then devised a strategy to use a bill that had already passed the House — H.R. 146, a proposal to protect Revolutionary War battlefields — and strip its contents, replacing it with the omnibus lands bill.

Because the House already passed H.R. 146, the Rules Committee can approve a closed rule that would block a motion to recommit, eliminating the GOP's best procedural chance to stymie the bill. The chamber would only need a simple majority vote to concur with the Senate amendment.

Who says that our legislative process is broken?

Isn't the new transparency great?

[galveston]

galveston,
The president does not have the authority to cap the pay of senators and he and his White House senior staff have already agreed to no salary increases. Sorry to give you such disappointing facts. Now, won't you join me in supporting our president?

You are right. Obama doesn't have authority to cap the pay of senators.

He also doesn't have authority to cap anyone else's pay either, but it sounds like he may try to, doesn't it?

Don't get me wrong. It likely won't make a nickel of difference to me, one way or the other, but right is right.

I'll support him when he becomes a conservative.

[twinkiedooter]

Will he limit the obscene salaries that some sports figures get?

Will he cap senators pay, his own? If he is consistent, he will have to.

Don't hold your breath waiting though.

You want to talk about obscene salaries? What about the actors who make millions for a few weeks worth of work on a movie? And they are the producer of the film or the director as well as the star of the film? Now that's obscene salaries if I ever saw them.

And I agree, lets seriously trim the zeros off a lot of the football, basketball, baseball stars salaries as well. They get HOW much to play a game? Really? You have got to be kidding at the amounts of money these morons rake in. Just because they can dribble a ball or run after someone and jump on them or tackle them to the ground they get paid fortunes.

Also, who's idea was it to have all these elaborate sports stadiums built? That is nothing more than the Ancient Romans Bread and Circus mentality of having gladiators kill each other for sport. Watching grown men ram into each other for 2 hours never had any allure for me - EVER!