WASHINGTON, DC —  Congressman Jeb Hensarling, the top Republican on the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit and the lone Member of Congress on the Congressional Oversight Panel for the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) issued the following statement in reaction to media reports that U.S. pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg, plans to order that the top earners at firms which received billions of dollars in government bailouts cut their cash payouts by an average of about 90% from last year:

“As I have said from Day One, what private companies do with their own money is their business.  What they do with the taxpayers’ money is our business.

“I hope taxpayers realize that the only way they ever end up subsidizing offensive executive salaries is when the government bails out the executives and the companies they run in the first place.  This should be yet another example of why we should terminate TARP at the end of this year.”