The Electorate Gap: Democrat Senators Bash CEO Pay While Own Salaries Soar

15 Democrat Senators penned a letter to SEC Commissioner Mary Jo White demanding her "assurance that the SEC is still planning to finalize the rule" requiring publicly traded companies to track and publish "the ratio of what they pay their CEO to the compensation of their median worker."

The Democrats claim this information is vital so that if a CEO requests a pay raise, investors will be able to evaluate "whether this is value creation or simply value capture by insiders." In a previous letter to the SEC during the public comment period for the proposed rule, Democrats complained that CEO pay is too often driven "upward without clear links to additional value created."

Value capture by insiders without clear links to additional value created: that sounds like the definition of congressional pay which has ballooned from $72,600 in 1984 to $174,000 today.

In fact, despite the newly-elected Obama's promise to end "business as usual" and the Democrats' stranglehold on Congress in his first term, Congress graciously accepted raises from itself in 2008 and 2009 despite a tanked economy and, in 2009, a falling median household income.

I'd like to know what value these Democrats complaining about CEO pay think they added to the US economy to justify a pay hike funded by Americans whose own incomes were shrinking. Will Elizabeth Warren rail against this value capture by insiders whose salaries the rest of us paid for with the same zeal she exhibits when bashing the private sector, or do the rules she wants forced on us not apply to government?