CT Blue

Joe Courtney dropped by Groton headquarters to visit the troops a short while ago. Joe is that rare person-a politician who is also a genuinely nice guy.

Joe voted against the second bailout bill, for which he should be applauded. He was right on the merits with his first vote, and there was no logical reason for him to change his vote for the second bill, which by any measure important to a Democrat was worse than the first bill. Joe’s to be commended for sticking to his guns.

In a few weeks or months we’ll be hearing that more needs to be done. Hopefully, at that point, the Democrats will be in a position to dictate the response and they’ll have the willingness to pass something that will benefit the people of this country.

UPDATE: I had heard from one well placed person that one of Joe’s problems with the bill was the fact that it did nothing to limit executive compensation. I repeated that to a few people, all of whom thought that it did, and I myself had not heard anything independently to suggest that the limits had been deleted from, for instance, what Dodd had proposed. I don’t know if this was one of Joe’s problems, but it does look like the executive compensation limits are of the Potemkin variety:

For supporters of the Bush administration’s $700-billion Wall Street bailout, it stands as a key selling point: a provision that limits pay packages for the heads of companies helped by the taxpayer-funded rescue program.

There’s just one problem: It would do little to cap executive pay or rein in the enormous retirement packages – the golden parachutes – that have come to symbolize corporate excess.

Not only is the compensation provision vague, it is punched full of loopholes and leaves many issues of executive pay for the White House to decide later. Legal and political experts say the bill will do almost nothing to limit CEO compensation – even for companies that benefit handsomely from the taxpayers’ generosity.