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Executive Compensation in the 109th Congress In November of 2005, Congressman Barney Frank, the Senior Democrat on the Financial Services Committee, introduced H.R. 4291, "The Protection Against Executive Compensation Abuse Act." The bill is a "market-based" approach that empowers shareholders to review and approve their company's comprehensive executive compensation plan. The bill would not establish any artificial restrictions on executive compensation. H.R. 4291 is supported by many shareholder and workers rights groups and investors, including The Corporate Library, AFL-CIO and the California State Teachers' Board. While the bill is supported by a large number of Democrats, not a single Republican has signed on as a co-sponsor of the bill. Republican leadership has denied debate on the bill in the Financial Services Committee and is resisting Democratic efforts to mark up the bill and have a vote on it in committee. Democratic requests for a hearing on the subject of executive compensation were denied by Republican leadership. In response, in May of 2006, all 33 of the minority committee members signed a letter to invoke the rarely used committee Rule XI to force a hearing on the issue of executive compensation. This hearing on executive compensation abuse was held on May 25, 2006. Since then, Democratic members of the Financial Services Committee called for a meeting to mark-up and vote on "The Protection Against Executive Compensation Abuse Act", but Republican leadership refused to schedule a mark-up of the bill. In response, in July of 2006, every Democratic member of the committee and the one Independent member signed a letter to attempt to force a mark-up of the bill. Under committee rules, a majority of members of the committee can force a mark-up of a bill. If only three Republican members of the committee were to join this effort, there would be enough support to force a mark-up of the bill. Not a single Republican member of the committee has come forward to do so. Click here for a summary of "The Protection Against Executive Compensation Act". Click here for an examination of the current problems of executive compensation. The Hartford Courant issues correction to its inaccurate editorial on Rep. Frank's Executive Compensation Legislation: "The Nov. 18 editorial "Out-Of-Control Executive Pay" was in error in saying that U.S. Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts wants to cap executive pay by law. Mr. Frank's bill would not set any limits on individual executive compensation."
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