Lucas,
In Congress, Democrats and Republicans don't see eye to eye on much.
But Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) is introducing a bill that should, if common sense prevails, receive wide bipartisan support.
Doggett's bill is the House version of the Stop Subsidizing Multimillion Dollar Corporate Bonuses Act, which would end subsidies that inflate CEO bonuses at taxpayers' expense.
Urge your representative to end taxpayer subsidized CEO bonuses.
Thanks in part to the tens of thousands of messages activists like you sent to your senators, the Senate version of this bill now has six co-sponsors: Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).
Now it's time to turn up the pressure on the House of Representatives.
If ever there was an issue House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) should be working on together, it's this.
The problem stems from a 1993 tax law that was intended to limit corporate tax deductions for executive compensation but contained a loophole permitting publicly traded corporations to deduct the "performance-based" pay they lavished on top executives.
As a result, taxpayers like you and me are subsidizing multimillion-dollar bonuses and stock options that encourage high-level employees to prioritize short-term profits over the long-term health of their own companies and even our entire economy.
Between 2007 and 2010, this loophole cost taxpayers $30 billion. To put that in perspective, the cost of unemployment benefits that GOP lawmakers rejected in the latest budget was $6.4 billion.
Lawmakers who say they care about stopping taxpayer money from being wasted should be falling over themselves in a rush to co-sponsor this bill.
Do your part today:
Help boost the number of House sponsors of the Stop Subsidizing Multimillion Dollar Corporate Bonuses Act.
Thanks for all you do,
Rick Claypool
Public Citizen's Online Action Team
action@citizen.org