Three senators want to limit the portion of defense contractor salaries paid by taxpayers to the same compensation given to the United States' chief executive: $200,000, LEGI-SLATE News Service reported.
"No defense contractor executive should be paid more by taxpayers than the commander in chief," argued Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Tom Harkin, D- Iowa, in a "Dear Colleague" sent last week. The senators plan to propose a $200,000 cap this week as a floor amendment to the fiscal 1998 Defense authorization.
They also released a draft General Accounting Office report showing loopholes in previously enacted salary restrictions permitted McDonnell Douglas to charge the government $33 million more in salaries than allowed in 1995.
The amount of an individual executive's compensation that could be billed to the Pentagon as part of a company's overhead was limited last year to $250,000. But the pending Senate defense bill would set a new threshold based on a survey of what other industries pay their top officers, allowing about $340,000 to be charged per executive to the government for 1997.
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