Wednesday, February 04, 2009

"My Phones Have Not Stopped Ringing"

Speaking on MSNBC's Hardball Tuesday night, Sen. Claire McCaskill said she will offer her controversial salary cap amendment over the next few days and adds she's optimistic President Obama will sign the legislation into law.

McCaskill is proposing to cap the amount an executive can make in a year (between $400,000 and $500,000 annually) if his or her company takes federal money. Companies would not be able to pay out more than the cap until they reimbursed the federal government, under McCaskill's plan.

****BLOOMBERG REPORTS OBAMA WILL BACK MCCASKILL'S PLAN IN AN ANNOUNCEMENT WEDNESDAY.****

***
"Only if they are dependent on public money and only until they pay us back," explained McCaskill on Hardball. "It's none of our business what people make in the private sector -- unless the taxpayers are on the hook for hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars."

Says she's busy trying to "work with the White House as we speak to work out this plan."

"My phones have not stopped ringing since we proposed this," McCaskill said.

ON DASCHLE'S HHS WITHDRAWAL: "This whole situation kind of gives me a stomach ache. This is a good guy, who has worked hard and has such respect up on the hill. I get the rules around here, the rules are you live in a glass house . . . but it is too bad because he had a lot to offer our country. And I really admire him, because nobody made him do this. This wasn't the White House. This wasn't people in Congress. He decided it was the patriotic thing to do."

ALSO: Dismisses there's any bad blood between the White House (& Rhambo) and Howard Dean

1 comment:

Steve said...

Personally, as a staunch political independent centrist, I am glad to see Daschle step down from consideration. His choice (if he did jump rather than being pushed) was a selfless one that fits very well with the image I had of Sen. Daschle when I lived in South Dakota, where he was well-respected.

Rather than rely upon being voted in by his own party, he gave credence to both parties voices by saying, through his actions, "I'm not the best candidate at this time."

It was a respectable move that hopefully is telling of the next term of this Congress.

Not even mentioned in most stories is Nancy Killefer, who stepped down because of, not 100s of 1000s of dollars (like Daschle), but for a $950 lien on her home in unpaid taxes.

I hope that this is a signal of some changing sense of ethics in Washington.