In a Wall Street Journal editorial on Friday Sen Jim DeMint (R-SC) made the case that taxpayer support for organizations that pay their executives huge salaries and bonuses is unaffordable. He further goes on to show how the Federal government can save almost 1/2 a billion dollars by removing these preferences.
I think it is time to take the Republican senator up on his offer and establish his analysis throughout the budget. Any company that pays their executives high salaries should have all their taxpayer support removed. I think using this approach we can fix the budget deficit rather quickly.
Now he's a Republican so he probably didn't understand that he made the case for removing oil industry tax credits, agricultural subsidies, defense contracts, hedge fund tax preferences. He was talking about cutting Public Broadcasting funds.
It is pretty quant to see a Republican senator fretting that a CEO makes a million dollars and that he's not worried that it is too little. But if the cost of removing 10's of billions in tax spending is $451M for public broadcasting, I think it's a good deal, particularly of it helps push off the pressure on needed spending (education, health care, social security) I'm all for it.
(BTW I was surprised at the PBS and NPR salaries quoted, I'd have thought that people in those positions would be more modesty compensated (like no more than the President). I think his moaning about the CPB CEO salary is just jealousy, it's higher than a senator's.)