"...and Barney Frank knows a lot about pay for performance."

This column comes from 3BP contributor, Thanksforyourtaxes. His experience on the Hill and now doing congressional affairs at a local DC think tank provides us some good insight, but not as much as his ability to cut the bullshit and tell us what he really thinks:

Rep. Frank has laid another whopper on us. As detailed in "Beyond AIG":

The “Pay for Performance Act of 2009” states that the government can impose controls over employee pay for ANY company that accepts federal tax payer dollars (or ‘investments’).

I know your first response: “What the F%*&?!”

But beyond that, just how is this ‘performance’ measured? The answer, unfortunately, is the U.S. Department of the Treasury. How do they think Geithner or anyone in the frighteningly understaffed Treasury are going to be able to better hire/fire/promote/pay any employee of any corporation?

Because they love big government. Why has this not made huge news like the bonuses Senators agreed to pay AIG employees? I just don’t get it.

Wait a second, though. This could be a good thing. Why would any company in their right mind take federal dollars to stay afloat? Everyone in the company would benefit from Chapter 11, more or less, rather than the government coming in and saying “you can make this much, you can make this much.” Soon everyone will know what the GS13-45-ER222 government pay scale is exactly.

The fact is, your tax dollars are already bailing out government employees every day. I have an idea, as the DJ mentioned yesterday, let’s start looking at the ‘performance’ of government employees! After all, these are people who work at the pleasure of the taxpayer, right? As it stands, you can't be fired from a government job.

Let's test this ‘pay for performance’ idea on government employees. (out of the kindness of our heart, we'll start them all with a clean slate, despite years of data showing their inefficiencies) Someone offer up a bill expanding 'pay for performance' to federal employees. That way we can make really gauge the salaries of some crazy NASA scientist that spends his work days protesting global warming and promoting some altogether massively inefficient transportation system; or some HHS employee downloading porn on his desktop.

Let's give Barney Frank a chance to clean up what he should be making accountable -- the government.