OBSCENE: Patriotic Millionaires Slam Senate Bill Provisions on CEO Compensation
“It takes an utter lack of humanity to ignore the plight of millions of needy Americans and instead hand out millions to corporate CEOs”
Washington, DC – Today details were released of the near-final form of the Senate’s coronavirus stimulus bill. Despite the addition of some conditions on the corporations set to receive billions of dollars in assistance, the bill still does almost nothing to limit excessive executive compensation, putting the American taxpayer on the hook for multi-million dollar compensation packages for the CEOs of bailed-out corporations.
According to an analysis done by the Institute for Policy Studies, the CEOs of American Airlines and Delta could still be paid $7.5 million and $9 million respectively annually under the conditions set on airlines and other corporations receiving bailout money.
In response to this news, the Patriotic Millionaires released the following statement:
“It is obscene that lawmakers – led by Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans – are using a deadly global pandemic as an excuse to hand already overpaid CEOs millions of taxpayer dollars. They had to be browbeaten into including reasonable provisions to help working people, but are apparently thrilled to hand huge corporations millions of dollars with essentially no strings attached.”
Members of the organization added their own thoughts:
Morris Pearl, the Chair of the Patriotic Millionaires and a former managing director at BlackRock, Inc., said “Most taxpayers agree the CEO of American Airlines should not receive millions of dollars from American taxpayers in the middle of a global pandemic. It is appalling that Senate Republicans disagree with that.”
George Zimmer, Founder of Men’s Wearhouse and Founder and CEO of Generation Tux, said, “This entire $2 trillion dollar bill is a con on the American people. Just like the 2008 bank bailout, it hands enormous sums to big companies who could likely get it from Wall Street or other sources and gives relatively little to the millions of employees who desperately need help. It’s unbelievable.”
Stephen Prince, Vice-Chair of the Patriotic Millionaires and Founder and CEO of Card Marketing Services, said, “It takes an utter lack of humanity to ignore the plight of millions of needy Americans and instead hand out millions to corporate CEOs. But I guess poor people don’t make big political contributions.”
For further comments or questions, please contact Sam Quigley at sam@patrioticmillionaires.org.
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About the Patriotic Millionaires
Proud “traitors to their class,” members of the Patriotic Millionaires are high-net worth Americans, business leaders, and investors who are united in their concern about the destabilizing concentration of wealth and power in America. The mission of The Patriotic Millionaires organization is to build a more stable, prosperous, and inclusive nation by promoting public policies based on the “first principles” of equal political representation, a guaranteed living wage for all working citizens, and a fair tax system. You can find out more at https://patrioticmillionaires.org/about/
The Patriotic Millionaires have appeared on hundreds of media outlets here and abroad, including The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the PBS NewsHour, The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and many others. You can find more coverage at https://patrioticmillionaires.org/media
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