Bernie Sanders, Democrats Targeting ‘Excessive CEO Pay’ in New Bill
However, the bill does not include the biggest business of all: the federal government. These sponsors are all worth millions!
Democrat Sens. Bernie Sanders, Ed Markey, Chris Van Hollen, Elizabeth Warren and Reps. Barbara Lee and Rashida Tlaib have drafted legislation to punish CEOs for running a successful business.
The press release and bill have all the buzzwords and phrases: corporate greed, fair share, working families, taxes, and wealth inequality.
The Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act would amend an IRS code “to impose a corporate tax rate increase on companies whose ratio of compensation of the CEO or other highest paid employee to median worker compensation is more than 50 to 1, and for other purposes.”
However, the bill does not include the biggest business of all: the federal government.
“The American people understand that today we are moving toward an oligarchic form of society where the very rich are doing phenomenally well, while working families continue to struggle to put a roof over their heads, feed their families, and pay for the basic necessities of life,” stated Sanders. “The American people are sick and tired of CEOs making nearly 350 times more than their average employees while over 60 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, the American people are demanding that large, profitable corporations pay their fair share of taxes and treat their employees with the dignity and respect they deserve. That is what this legislation will begin to do.”
I guess the new tax code would not apply to Millionaire Sanders. He’s worth $3 million.
Markey is worth $819,507 to millions. I’ve seen Van Hollen’s worth between $600,000 to millions.
Elizabeth Warren? $12 million!! Barbara Lee? $15 million! Rashida Tlaib? $2 million!
Tlaib isn’t wrong when she said, “Corporate greed is a disease that has long afflicted our country. CEOs are now making 400 times more than their average worker. It’s disgraceful that corporations continue to rake in record profits by exploiting the labor of their workers. Working families deserve to live with human dignity.
Oh, wait. She wasn’t talking about the federal government.
You could apply this rule to all the lawmakers when you compare their salaries to those who work in their offices.
Businesses can avoid the tax hike if they raise salaries but cut the CEO salaries.
The proposal would also make the Department of Treasury “issue regulations to prevent tax avoidance, including against companies that increase the use of contractors rather than employees.”
I doubt the bill will go anywhere, but none of these people will ever stop trying to pass it.
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Comments
Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act?
There you go again. Just leave us alone. Companies can make their own choices. Employees choose to work at companies – value given, value received.
This constant interference with the lives of others is behind the whole purpose of limiting what government could do. Just leave frapping alone.
Brandeis as expressed in Olmstead v. US (1928),
“The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man’s spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred against the government, the right to be let alone—the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.”
The left is constantly playing, or throwing gasoline on, class warfare.
Division is what gives them power. You don’t like what a CEO makes? Don’t buy their product. That’s what I do to Google, Microsoft and Fakebook.
It is just more socialism packaged as envy. Lousy Dems.
What about the excess cost of our government, and politicians. Or the excess pay to sports figures and actors.
Except most pro athletes, pop/rock singers and movie actors and producers staunchly support the Dhimmi-crat Party — so, their “excessive” compensation is deemed to be okay, by the vile Dhimmi-crats.
I put the word “excessive” in quotes because I don’t believe these people are earning excessive compensation — they’re paid what the market values them at, even if they’re engaged in utterly asinine products and industries that don’t produce anything of tangible value.
“Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act?”
Anti Dog-Eat-Dog Rule?
I never expected to be living in the world of Atlas Shrugged:
Targeting costly meds, Biden admin asserts authority to seize certain drug patents
Sound familiar? “Directive 10-289” from Atlas Shrugged.
The tax rate used to be 90% for the richest and nobody paid it. Instead corporate creativity went into tax avoidance schemes.
Not really creative. The government had approved things you could do that reduced your taxes just as now only more so. So it was more Fascist i.e. Private ownership with government control.
Watch how many allegedly American companies move their headquarters and articles of incorporation overseas.
Great! Now do football and baseball players!
https://boardroom.tv/biggest-contracts-in-nfl-history/
https://theanalyst.com/na/2023/12/the-highest-paid-major-league-baseball-players-and-largest-contracts-in-mlb-history/
Baseball and football players at least contribute to improved orthopedic surgeries by having things like Tommy Johns surgery be developed to let them extend their careers. These kinds of surgeries are helpful to us normals once they are perfected.
Tommy Johns surgery is cheating.
Sorry … pet peeve of mine.
They are overpaid and overhyped to play a game……but no I don’t think its the government’s business.
It’s a societal problem that society needs to fix.
And actors.
Says a useless clown who votes on his own salary and privileges…routinely exempting himself from Federal impositions he put on others.
Claudine Gay is getting paid almost $1,000,000/year to xerox other people’s papers and whine about “racism” to explain away her low-IQ problems in life. I wouldn’t pay anyone more than $15/week to do that for me. … although, I guess the xeroxing has to be paid least $15/hour to satisfy the commie minimum wage law …
From the Cornell Law School web site: Article I, Section 9, Clause 3:
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
This includes bills of pains and penalties. Meaning: congress cannot target specific individuals with tailored legislation to punish them without judicial due process.
So, boys and girls, STILL & AGAIN: Until qualified immunity is abolished, and those that win a popularity contest to govern are criminally punished for their aggressive and egregious anti-constitutional laws or policies to deprive the plain, enumerated rights of citizens, we’re simply engaged in repeated political m*st*rbation before the courts as these anti-constitutional actors repeatedly attempt their anti-constitutional acts.
That is my TED talk. Thank you.
I would like to see a limit on how much money an Elected Government Employee that never worked a day in his life can amass.
If the Constitution were followed to its express words, fedgov would be no more than 5% of its present size. That’s how far we’ve strayed from original meaning. Blame is to be placed on the 000s who’ve served in Congress these last 125 years who were never faithful to the Article VI oath.
It wasn’t what government did that made America great; it was what government was prevented from doing that made the difference, [limiting fedgov to those things in Article 1, section 8]
What set America apart from all other lands was freedom – for the individual. Freedom to work, to produce, to succeed and, especially, to keep the fruits of one’s labor.
America became great precisely because the stifling effects of too much government had been prevented.
Marxists gotta Marx… how will this bill put more money in the pockets of employees? It won’t, but it’s the dignity that counts.
And these guys still call themselves Progressives by bitterly clinging to a 180 year old economic theory which never even proved a tiny bit successful..
This is stupid and won’t work. CEOs will just take the bulk of their compensation in the form of stock options.
They could adopt the Hunter Biden tactic of getting all pay in the form of 1000 year balloon loans.
The Biden Crime Family has more “loans” flying around than a small city S+L.
How much value have the vile Dhimmi-crat apparatchiks created for the U.S.’s “shareholders,” i.e., tax-paying, law-abiding and productive citizens? None whatsoever. Dhimmi-crats only preside over an erosion of value, in fiscal and quality-of-life terms.
CEO compensation is properly an issue dealt with by company shareholders and the Board of Directors.
The vile, totalitarian, neo-communist Dhimmi-crats will never cease their obnoxious, demagogic and pandering antics until they exert total control over every facet and sphere of American society.
The Dhimmi-crats are worse than worthless. Criminals are running rampant in the streets of our cities; homeless people are everywhere; illegal aliens brazenly strut across our southern border to play their part in the “catch-and-release” farce; China, Iran and other malignant state actors are ramping up their belligerence against the U.S. and our allies; the national debt is out of control; girls and women, and, children and teens of both sexes, are being abused and manipulated by the misogynistic and narcissistic “trans” ideology and its fanatical adherents and cheerleaders; to name only a few of the myriad problems facing the U.S.
But, God forbid that the Dhimmi-crats deal with such pedestrian matters. No, CEO compensation is the allegedly pressing issue of the day.
Let’s see the vile Dhimmi-crats raise the corporate tax on media company parents of Hollywood studios paying the Dhimmi-crats’ Hollywood actor, writer and producer pals compensation far greater than what the average CEO earns. And, a CEO is at least ideally creating value for his/her shareholders; retirees, pension funds and regular investors; unlike these Hollywood twits.
Also, for the Dhimmi-crats to complain about CEO compensation, when they and their profligate and wretched Party bear the bulk of the blame for our ~$34 trillion national debt — is utterly obscene and offensive.
If Hollywood actor, writer or producer is earning more than fifty times their guild minimum compensation rate, start imposing corporate tax increases on the media company parent that owns the TV or movie studio at issue.
We need to start throwing the vile Dhimmi-crats’ idiotic policy conceits right back in their miserable faces.
Would this qualify as a Bill of Attainder?
Probably no more than a progressive income tax is one
How about we limit the number of properties an elected person can own and at the same time, we can decrease their carbon emissions by keeping them bound and gagged when not performing official duties.
How about if you are a Representative, Senator, Cabinet member, President or VP you are taxed 70% on every dollar you make over your federal salary?
So you go out and give a speech for 100k, 70k is tax. And once you leave office every dollar you make that is connected to what you did in office is taxed at 30%. So you write a book about when you were a Senator, 30% of the profits go to the government. After all you were working for the people so shouldn’t they get some back from you writing about it.
How the hay is private CEO compensation any of their damn business?
Boy these people are arrogant thieves.
Dad used to say (many moons ago), “When the politicians figure out a way to tax the air, they’ll do it.”
They have. Colorado charges 27c on every truck package delivery to a residence (to offset something or other “green” crap), despite fuel taxes are already paid. They call it a fee, it’s another subversive tax The Cheats snuck in when no one was looking.
While I am the first person to say that CEOs are paid WAY too much more, are immoral monsters,,, How DARE the government try to get to say what anyone is worth…
How about instead,, we start paying DC lawgivers what they are worth, for what they add to the American way of life..
If that were done, Bernie would have to get a side hustle to afford his several mansions.
Similar, past legislation only resulted in loopholes such as shifting compensation to stock. It provided a defensible means of vastly increasing executive compensation.
Up until about 7 years ago, this would have upset me. But now that the corporate world (not just Big Tech but most of the business world) has decided to go woke and work with the Globalists on a leftist agenda, my view is “You advocate for leftism, why SHOULDN’T you abide by it?”
I’d love to see all those filthy, Commie tech people get their salaries cut. It would serve them right.
How about legislation challenging ecessive home ownership for Senators like Bernie?
While I do not agree with the method I am sympathetic to the sentiment of the proposal. Go back 50 years to the early 1970’s and look at the pay ratio that corporations had voluntarily put in place. Hint they were much closer to what Sanders is proposing.
If the large multinational corporations want my assistance in fighting back on these proposals they gonna need to demonstrate they are mostly on ‘my side’ politically. They chose to support d/prog, put DEI into place, outsource manufacturing jobs and so on. When they reverse course and begin to act like our ally then we can see about helping defend them.
One word: TYRANNY
Sanders is a Communist bum.
More communist bullshit. Those jobs are worth what the companies are willing to pay people to do them. If a company determines that a CEO will add enough value to the company to pay those salaries and still see a profit on top of that, what business is that to Congress? Those people will already pay elevated income taxes.
While most public large company CEOs aren’t worth the compensation they paid, (the premium in pay is higher than the next best option). Companies will just fiddle with the compensation formula. To get around the tax.
A better idea is to make all members of Congress liable for the laws they pass that fail.
So quaint, the Marxists still going after the rich must pay their fair share to suck in the poor voters
As for the numbers in the bill, where do they come from? Was there any sort of economic analysis or rationale for the numbers, or were they simply pulled out of Sanders’ wrinkled butt?
“Fair share” is a useless emotional phrase that should have nothing to do with crafting government policy.
Let’s tax the income of Congressmen, Senators, Presidents, VPs, Cabinet Members, and Judges, that come from non-salaried sources that they did not have before taking office at a 100% rate.
Since that would affect Bernie a lot, I doubt he would support that!
Research has show that CEO pay is most highly correlated with company size. More assets and revenue to manage, more pay. Corporations certainly have their issues, but most of their issues are due to idiots in government fixing problems.
Oh, it’s political / economic headlines. This is fun:
The US Federal Ministry of Production, having knee capped individual industries and segments with its “support” — GMs shutting down, down, now, right? — has a new strategy to reduce all production across the board. They’ve long used taxation for that, but in an election year, they need another approach until they get voted in again.
It looks like The Screaming D political strategists have concluded that upset and misery will bring out their base, in the face of the alternative party’s pitch of opportunity, and growth. Comfortably people stay home.
In other economic news, this last week saw a couple billion in “loan forgiveness” running ahead of that whole authoritah grab getting adjudicated — hey, by the time it’s decided Brandon will have bought his way to reelection, so mission accomplished. Or as it’s now called The Reid Maneuver.
The tech FCCs equal access regulation has yet to show any law fare teeth, disappointing activists and advocates. And appliance mandates are in a more chaotic legal limbo, making it uncertain whether this particular reduction in people’s lives working will survive. On the up side, the continuing uncertainty causes its own problems.
In political news, made man socialist Bernie Three Houses, having been schooled that he can’t keep his grift without the
familyparty, is now playing his position, proposing economic equity looking things as directed. Hey, gestures at CEOs, “millionaires and billionaires” worked for The One, til he got way rich, so why not again?I literally never think about how much my CEO makes, nor does anyone that I know of. This is a communist wedge-issue.
Fiscal Sanity has been a watchword for the Democrat Party for decades.
FJB
FBS