Obama’s Millions for Fannie, Freddie Execs. But Who’s Counting?
Washington,
June 1, 2011 -
John Solomon, a former Associated Press reporter who is now at the Center for Public Integrity, recently wrote about an issue for the Daily Beast that deserves more attention than it gets:
Over the last two years, the Obama administration has approved a
whopping $34.4 million in compensation to the top six executives of
the financially troubled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage giants,
and lacks the necessary protections to ensure such compensation is
even warranted.
Astounding, isn’t it? The top executives of these failed companies -- bailed out courtesy of American taxpayers -- receive multi-million dollar pay packages -- again, courtesy of American taxpayers. These are many of the same American taxpayers, remember, who are having a difficult time making ends meet these days.
Earlier this year, Financial Services Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus re-introduced legislation he first proposed during the 111th Congress to suspend these extravagant pay packages at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Chairman’s bill also places the pay of employees at these two Government Sponsored Enterprises more in line with that of Federal employees and expresses the sense of the Congress that the pay packages provided to Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s senior executives were excessive and that the money should be used to help reduce the national debt.
Chairman Bachus’s bill, H.R. 1221, was approved by the Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government Sponsored Enterprises by a vote of 27-6 on April 6.
Awarding lavish pay packages to the heads of companies that have accepted more than $150 billion in taxpayer bailout cash cannot be defended and must be stopped.
