Ethics Newsline®

WASHINGTON
A powerful southern Republican lawmaker last week said that excessive executive pay reflects an ethical decline in the United States and warned that Americans are getting fed up.

Alabama Rep. Spencer Bachus said the public is disturbed by pay that is not justified by performance.

“If nothing else, it shows we’ve had some decline in ethics or our moral behavior. How we address that I’m not sure. It’s a situation most Americans will not tolerate for long,” he said, according to a report from the Reuters news agency.

Bachus is the senior Republican on the House Financial Services Committee, which is debating a measure that would allow corporate shareholders to vote on executive compensation packages.

BusinessWeek notes that while some business groups vehemently oppose the bill, which is sponsored primarily by Democrats, members of both parties have expressed concern with executive pay packages.

Bachus, who is seen as having a strong pro-business stance, spoke in what for him was unusual language when he said that “lavish executive compensation packages for CEOs have contributed to the growing public perception — justified or not — that the rules in corporate America are rigged in favor of well-insulated insiders.”

“In fact, some recent examples seem to show outrageous rewards for rank incompetence,” he said, according to a report from BusinessWeek.

Under the bill pending in the House committee, shareholders would have an advisory vote on compensation packages, similar to current practice in Australia, Britain, and Sweden, the Cox News Service reports.