32 Corporations Spent More On Compensation For Top Executives In 2010 Than They Paid In Income Taxes

By Pat Garofalo

Over the last few decades, executive pay at large corporations has skyrocketed. Today, American CEOs make263 times the average compensation for American workers, up from the 30 to 1 ratio in the 1970s. In 2010 alone, CEO pay went up 27 percent while average worker pay went up just 2 percent.

At the same time, corporate tax revenue has plunged to historic lows. During the 1960s, for instance, the United States consistently raised nearly 4 percent of GDP in corporate revenue. During the 1970s, the total was still above 2.5 percent of GDP. But the U.S. now raises less than 1.5 percent of GDP from the corporate income tax.

According to a new report called “S.& P. 500 Executive Pay: Bigger Than …Whatever You Think It Is,” put together by the independent research firm R. G. Associates, there are currently 32 companies that actually spent more on compensation for their top executives in 2010 than they paid in corporate income taxes:

Total executive pay increased by 13.9 percent in 2010 among the 483 companies where data was available for the analysis. The total pay for those companies’ 2,591 named executives, before taxes, was $14.3 billion…Warming to his subject, Mr. Ciesielski also determined that 158 companies paid more in cash compensation to their top guys and gals last year than they paid in audit fees to their accounting firms. Thirty-two companies paid their top executives more in 2010 than they paid in cash income taxes.

This isn’t really surprising when you consider that several of the largest U.S. corporations simply paid no taxes at all last year. General Electric, for instance, made more than $5 billion last year, but had a tax rate of -64 percent, meaning it received billions in tax benefits. Boeing hasn’t paid any federal income tax in three years, while CEO Jim McNerny made $19 million last year.

At the moment, a slew of multinational corporations — who already pay exceedingly low taxes— are lobbying for yet another tax boondoggle that would cost the government nearly $80 billion in revenue over the next ten years. With corporate taxes already so low, and corporations flush with cash and paying tens of millions to their CEOs, there’s little reason to grant these huge companies yet another giant tax giveaway.

In 2010, CEO Pay Went Up 27% While Worker Pay Went Up 2%

By Pat Garofalo

Households across the country are still feeling the effects of the Great Recession, with unemploymentfalling very slowly, while foreclosures are still increasing, along with poverty rates and oil prices. However, one group of Americans is doing very well — corporate CEOs, whose pay is returning to pre-recession levels:

At a time most employees can barely remember their last substantial raise, median CEO pay jumped 27% in 2010 as the executives’ compensation started working its way back to prerecession levels, a USA TODAY analysis of data from GovernanceMetrics International found.Workers in private industry, meanwhile, saw their compensation grow just 2.1% in the 12 months ended December 2010, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Median CEO pay last year was $9 million, the highest since 2007. The median CEO bonus was $2.2 million. Family wealth, meanwhile, is currently down $12.8 trillion from its 2007 peak.

Leaders Of US Chamber Awarded Themselves Record Compensation While Slashing American Jobs

By Think Progress

Today, President Obama addressed the leaders of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a highly ideologicalright-wing trade association representing mostlylarge international corporations. Obama urged the audience of business executives to “get in the game” and spend some of the trillions of dollars corporations have compiled in the past year on job creation. Indeed, much of the executive leadership of the Chamber has spent the past few years rewarding themselves with millions in additional compensation while eliminating American jobs.

Trucking Manufacturer Navistar Inc Is On The US Chamber’s Board Of Directors:

– In 2010, Naivstar CEO Daniel Ustianincreased his total compensation by 27%, from $6.64 million in FY 2009 to $8.43 million in the year that ended October 31. The company has enjoyed healthy profits: in 2009, it earned $320 million, or $4.46 a share, and in 2010, it made $223 million, or $3.11 a share.

– Navistar has slashed jobs at factories across the country. In Springfield, Ohio, Navistar laid off 250 workers from a truck assembly plant. At itsplant in Arkansas, the company laid off 477 in 2009 after letting 300workers go in 2008. Amid the layoffs and plant closures, Navistar, a major military contractor, opened a new factory in Mexico last year.

Telecommunications Giant AT&T Is On The US Chamber’s Board Of Directors:

– AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson was awarded a compensation package valued at $20.3 million in 2009, a jump of 35% from 2008. Last year, AT&T devoted an extra $8.99 million into Stephenson’s pension plan, ensuring that his retirement will include a pension “equal to 60 percent of his highest average salary and bonus in three of his last 10 years at the company. Although he’s not currently eligible for retirement, his pension is valued at an estimated $31 million today.”

– In recent years, AT&T has aggressively downsized its American workforce. In 2008, the company killed over 16,000 jobs as the recession hit. But in the last two years as AT&T enjoyed record profits, the company announced layoffs of “hundreds” in Kansas, 96 in Reynoldsburg, Ohio,150 in Connecticut, 525 technicians in California, and 140 jobs inOklahoma.

Agricultural Manufacturer Deere And Co. (John Deere Company) Is On The US Chamber’s Board Of Directors:

– Samuel Allen, the CEO and Chairman of Deere and Co., was awarded a compensation package in 2010 three times the size of his pay in 2009. Allen’s compensation was $12.29 million in 2010.

– As Deere and Co. recorded high profits, the company slashed jobs. The company killed 367 jobs in East Moline, Illinois, 325 in Iowa, and 89jobs in North Dakota.

Health Insurance Company WellPoint Is On The US Chamber’s Board Of Directors:

– In recent years, WellPoint has reported record profits and extraordinary executive compensation. In 2009, WellPoint CEO Angela Braly was awarded a 51% compensation boost from $8.7 million in 2008 to $13.1 million.

– During the same period of high profits and highly compensated executives, WellPoint shed thousands of jobs. In 2009, WellPoint laid off1,500 employees across the nation. Following the first round of layoffs, the company got rid of an additional 136 jobs in Missouri and 111 inWisconsin. Notably, during this same period WellPoint’s trade association secretly transfered $86 million to the Chamber to fight health reform.

Despite bloated rhetoric about the virtues of “free enterprise,” the Chamber demanded taxpayer bailouts for its bank members (AIG, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, etc.), billions in taxpayer money for its defense contract members, taxpayer money forcleaning up BP’s oil spill, and preferential tax cuts for its millionaire executives.

As ThinkProgress has documented, the Chamber has a history of being singularly focused on boosting profits, not creating American jobs. The Chamber has pushed for unfettered free trade deals, sponsored a series of conferences to teach businesses how to outsource jobs to China, and even lobbied against legislation that would have created over 1.7 million jobs.

Several dozen protesters demonstrated in front of the Chamber today as Obama walked across Lafayette Park from the White House to the business lobby. Watch a video produced by ThinkProgress interns Kevin Donohue and Paul Breer:

– Lee Fang, Zaid Jilani, Kevin Donohue and Paul Breer

REPORT: CEOs At Top 50 Companies That Laid Off Most Workers Raked In Millions In Compensation

By Ben Armbruster The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) released its annual report on

executive compensation today — “CEO Pay and the Great Recession.” “I’m afraid that this year’s report will raise just about everybody’s blood pressure,” lead author Sarah Anderson said. Indeed, the report found that “CEOs of the 50 firms that have laid off the most workers since the onset of the economic crisis took home nearly $12 million on average in 2009.” Those CEOs’ combined compensation totaled $598 million, while at the same time, their companies eliminated 531,363 jobs despite reporting a 44 percent average profit increase for 2009.

More staggering is the level of executive pay, according to IPS:

[A]fter adjusting for inflation, CEO pay in 2009 more than doubled the CEO pay average for the decade of the 1990s, more than quadrupled the CEO pay average for the 1980s, and ran approximately eight times the CEO average for all the decades of the mid-20th century.

American workers, by contrast, are taking home less in real weekly wages than they took home in the 1970s.

The Kansas City Star took a closer look at some of the CEOs and companies in IPS’s report:

Fred Hassan, former CEO of Schering-Plough, presided over announced layoffs affecting 16,000 workers after a 2009 merger with Merck. He resigned after the merger, receiving “golden parachute” compensation in 2009 of more than $49.6 million to rank as the highest-paid layoff leader.

The top five companies announcing the most layoffs for the study period were General Motors (75,733); Citigroup (52,175); Bank of America (35,000); Caterpillar (27,499) and Verizon (21,308). Among those top five, the biggest compensation package — nearly $17.5 million — went to Ivan Seidenberg, CEO of Verizon.

According to IPS, American CEOs make 263 times the average compensation for American workers, up from the 30 to 1 ratio in the 1970s. For comparison, the average compensation of a Japanese CEO is less than one-sixth that of their American counterpart and 16 times more than the average Japanese worker.

But on top of the lavish CEO pay at the expense of the American worker, many of these top-layoff firms received money from the taxpayer bailouts in 2008. Of these, IPS notes, “American Express CEO Kenneth Chenault took home the highest 2009 pay, $16.8 million, a sum that included a $5 million cash bonus. American Express has laid off 4,000 employees since receiving $3.39 billion in TARP funding.”

“These numbers all reflect a broader trend in Great Recession-era Corporate America,” the IPS report says, “the relentless squeezing of worker jobs, pay and benefits to boost corporate earnings and maintain corporate executive paychecks at their recent bloated levels.”