This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Jan. 30, 2009 - Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., doesn't think any financial executive whose company is getting federal bailout funds should earn any more than President Barack Obama -- and she isn't shy about the words she uses to make her case.
"We have a bunch of idiots on Wall Street that are kicking sand in the face of the American taxpayer," she said in an impassioned speech on the Senate floor on Friday.
"They don't get it. These people are idiots. You can't use taxpayer money to pay out $18 billion in bonuses."
McCaskill's comments came after news reports that companies that got bailout money were also paying big compensation. Obama began the criticism of the practice on Thursday, calling such payouts "the height of irresponsibility. It is shameful."
One day later, his staunch Missouri ally took up the argument in even stronger terms. She introduced legislation that would limit the annual compensation of the executives at any company receiving federal bailout money to the same salary as the president makes: $400,000.
"If any of them think it's a hardship to take the salary of the president of the United States," McCaskill said, "I dare them to say so out loud right now."
She emphasized that the compensation limit is tied to federal help.
"Now once they're off the public dole, once the taxpayers aren't footing the bill, then it's not as much our business what they get paid," McCaskill said. "But right now they're on the hook to us. And they owe us something other than a fancy waste basket and $50 million jet."
Urging support for the legislation, she said:
"We must have our financial institutions survive, but not with a culture that thinks it's OK to kick the taxpayer in the shins while they drink Champagne and fly in fancy jets.... I ask my colleagues to sign on this bill. I think it makes sense. We should have done it in the first place, but I don't think any of us thought these guys were this stupid."
In an interview on MSNBC, McCaskill expanded on her floor remarks, saying:
"You know, in Missouri, we really revere common sense. I don't get it. When we first started getting the sense that they were going to continue to get these multimillion-dollar salaries even though they'd really driven their companies into the ditch, I thought well, they were going to catch on.
"Then it kept getting worse and worse and worse, and finally I just said we're going to have to take action. I wish we would have known ahead of time about the greed and the selfishness and the culture of padding your own nest even if the ship is going down. We didn't realize how bad it was. We do now."
She said from here on in, executives who want bailout money should have to agree to the compensation limit. "If you won't," she added, "then you're outta luck."
"You have to understand I work for the people of Missouri," McCaskill said. "They are chewing my head off about this. This isn't just me coming up with a good idea. This is more about how people feel right now. I want that anger to be replaced with confidence, that we can go forward and our economy can thrive again. We're not going to get confident until we can fix this problem."
Read the text of McCaskill's legislation here.