RUSH: ‘The Obama administration today says that excessive executive compensation must be better managed to prevent the sort of risk-taking that jeopardizes the economy.’ Gene Sperling, who advises Timmy Geithner at the Treasury department, ‘said today that the administration does not want to impose caps on executive pay, but he also laid out for the House Financial Services Committee a list of guidelines calling on publicly held companies to link compensation to long-term performance, not short-term gains.’ They don’t want to cap, they want to control, and then they lay out how they’re going to do it, in typical Obama fashion, ‘No, we’re not going to control. We’re not going to cap anything! We’ll let the shareholders decide.’ Well, who the shareholders more and more are becoming is the United States government!
There’s another story, a lot of graduates this year decided to say, ‘Screw Wall Street! To hell with the private sector; I’m going to go work for the government,’ and why not? You could end up being a 31-year-old know-nothing and run a car company if you work for the United States government. And it’s the one sector where there is no recession. There is no depression. There’s no depressed value in your holdings. Everything is just hunky-dory when you work for the government. I’m telling you, this business here of reining in pay across the private sector… ‘Sperling said in prepared testimony the administration believes that compensation practices must be better aligned with long-term value and prudent risk management at all firms, not just for the financial services industry.’ That means Hollywood, too.
Does that mean that Oprah’s pay is going to be supervised? She’s an executive, and some might say that Oprah Winfrey making $227 million a year is a little bit excessive. Now, we’ve always had people throughout our history who have complained about the amount of money other people make. But let me tell you something, folks. The pursuit of wealth… You know, I often ask you to consider: What is it about the United States of America in less than 300 years that has allowed it — us — to become the most powerful-for-good force and nation in the history of this planet? There have been civilizations of people around far longer than we have. Europe and Asia. For some reason, the United States of America has become the most powerful nation on earth, the richest, the greatest standard of living. How did this happen? It’s because we, as a nation, were founded under the principles of individual liberty.
And the source of our liberty and freedom was acknowledged in our founding documents as having come from God. We were not a nation put together by a king who thought he was God’s gift to the world. We now have a president behaving like a king who thinks he is God’s gift to the world. The pursuit of wealth, for whatever reason, is one of the primary ingredients that led to this nation’s greatness. Now, wealth always gets demonized. It always has. There’s always been class envy. But never, until now, has there really been a serious move to prevent it from happening. This is precisely what is happening now from the Obama administration. All of this is about preventing the successful pursuit of wealth.
The pursuit of wealth is what gave us the greatest economy in the history of humanity. Now we have an administration that wants to shut all that down. The private sector is not going to be the focus of this country. The public sector is going to be, and the people who run it. I don’t have time to go into motivations and explain why they’re doing it. It’s enough that people understand that they are doing it. I know why they’re doing it. They’re statists. They want ultimate control. It’s a power trip. It’s also born of beliefs about this country that are untrue. Many of the people making these moves are simply poisoned, poisoned with their own hatred for this country. I would submit that there has to be an element of hatred for what this country is to make the assaults on this country that are being made.
Whatever is being done here in the name of ‘fairness and equality’ is not being done because somebody loves this country. It’s being done because somebody didn’t like it, or a whole host of people didn’t like it. There’s something unjust and immoral about it. Now, Obama’s book publisher, Crown Publishing, a division of Random House, they’re laying people off. His book publisher is laying people off, but you know what? He got a $500,000 advance, five days before assuming office to write a children’s book. I don’t know of a president ever signing a book deal upon entering the White House. Isn’t $500,000, in advance, for a book, risk-taking? Obama says we’ve gotta get risk-taking out of the scenario of compensation. If you take risk-taking out, if you remove that, you wave bye-bye to capitalism. You simply…
It’s in your rearview mirror as you’re heading down the road to serfdom. Capitalism is in the rearview mirror as you’re headed down the road to serfdom, if you buy into this notion that risk-taking is something that needs to be punished! They’re finally opening up and being honest about what they want to do. They want to punish achievers. They want to punish risk-takers. ‘The Obama administration…’ Here it is from state-run AP: ‘The Obama administration says executive compensation must be better managed to prevent the sort of short-term risk-taking that it’s so known for.’ Now, if we’re going to cap people’s pay — and make no mistake, while they deny it, it’s what they’re doing — if they’re going to issue ‘guidelines calling on publicly held companies to link compensation to long-term performance, not short-term gains so they can eliminate risk-taking,’ then let’s do the same thing with people who work for the government.
Let’s cap government pay at $100,000 any year there is a deficit in the annual United States budget. Let’s also include all of the imputed income for benefits of any kind federal employees get, from their cars to their health care to whatever it is. We taxpayers are taking a huge risk each and every day turning over the finances of this country to this current crop of leaders. And when they blow it — and they have blown it — it is an utter disaster. Do you realize nothing Obama has done has worked? Nothing has succeeded. And now they come along and they want to nationalize health care? The same bunch that, with their stimulus package, gave us record unemployment. Almost two million people are unemployed since the stimulus bill.
The same people who promised a thriving, burgeoning economy, with people going back to work, now want to take their expertise — the same people who helped destroy General Motors and Chrysler, the same people who told private sector investors, ‘Pfft you!’ The same people who have botched everything they have tried now tell us, only they can administer health care. So we cap government pay: a hundred grand a year, any time there’s a deficit, any time they don’t fulfill what they claim that they’re going to do. You talk about risk-taking? You talk about damaging? This administration is damaging the entire US economy. They are damaging and attacking the US private sector. They ought not be rewarded for it, and if any federal employee leaves government after a budget deficit year, they get no pension. I mean, if we’re going to start doing this stuff in the private sector, then let’s apply the same rules to people in the government.