ok, thomas.loc.gov now has the final version of the stimulus bill as being put to the vote to be sent to Obama - this is the House/Senate conference compromise plus extra bits the Speaker's office insisted upon after being unhappy with the Senate prematurely announcing agreement.
It is good for science, as good as can be expected. Maybe a bit too good in that we might pay a price later.
Interesting clause on executive compensation limitations.
PS: Bill has now passed senate and house and goes to President Obama for signature.
Not that I'm a worrywart or anything.
Ok, this particular legislative bjúga is called H1307-1516 (thomas.loc.gov links are dynamic and I haven't found a pdf hard link), from conference report 111-16.
Here's the important bits:
- NSF: $2000M science; $300M Major Research Instrumentation; $100M Education and Human Resources (this ought to be lots of grad and postdoc fellowships); $400M Major Facilities (ie Advanced Tech Solar Telescope; ALMA, Ecology Observation Network - the big project already in the pipeline and already under way or have broken ground).
This is huge. - NASA: $400M science; $150M aero; $400M exploration; $50M cross-agency
- DoE: $1600M science; $400M ARPA-E
- NOAA: $230M operation, research and faciltiies; $600M acquisition (somebody gets some new ships...)
- NIST: $220M research; $360M facilities
- USGS: $140M repair and facilities
- Smithsonian: $25M repair facilities (someone really has it in for the Smithsonian, some nasty DC politics there - they keep getting cut).
- National Endowment for the Arts: $50M art projects to preserve jobs in non-profits threatened by cuts in philanthropic support.
- NIH: 7400M for science - transferred to Office of Director to be spread proportionately among the Institutes and Centers - with some exclusions
$800M additional to Office of Director.
$1000M for repair and renovation of non-Federal research facilities.
$300M shared instrumentation and capital research equipment.
$500M for NIH construction.
Plus some funds transferred for effectiveness research - the pharmas really campaigned agains this. - CDC: the facilities funding for CDC was cut out completely although House and Senate agreed roughly on little over $400M before conference?!
Generally the agencies have until Sep 2010 to spend the money, so this is stretched over this and next federal fiscal, but there was also some phrase asking for money to be spent in the first 120 days.
There will be a lot of commercial contractors doing building upgrades and renovations at large research universities in the next 18 months.
That is actually classic stimulus - keep experienced construction crews together and working while, hopefully, the commerical and residential sectors settle and recover.
Some K-12 school construction and federal facilities will also keep people busy.
On Executive Compensation: there is a section (1412) on compensation for institutions receiving TARP funding.
Hard caps have been taken out, but there is a lot of amendment to previous law - which basically seems to give the Secretary (of the Treasury I presume) broad powers to impose limits on a case by case basis (with a section on how deep the restriciton goes depending on size of TARP funds received).
So, I suspect this gives SoT a lot of powers to cap executive pay, but wholly at their disgression (IANAL). Historically this would mean they would use their disgression to put on no limits.
PS: House of Representatives has passed the bill. Now to the Senate.
Now, we'll find out what Obama and Geithner think.
PPS: Actually the Executive Compensation amendment, apparently due to Senator Dodd, may have some serious teeth.
Looks like the Secretary of Treasury is required to prohibit top executives (of TARP recipient institutions). from getting bonuses that are more than 1/3 of their salary, and all bonus must be in stock.
That ought to have an effect.
Also a fraudulent criteria clause on bonuses.
``(2) STANDARDS REQUIRED.--The Secretary shall require each TARP recipient to meet appropriate standards for executive compensation and corporate governance.
``(3) SPECIFIC REQUIREMENTS.--The standards established under paragraph (2) shall include the following:
``(A) Limits on compensation that exclude incentives for senior executive officers of the TARP recipient to take unnecessary and excessive risks that threaten the value of such recipient during the period in which any obligation arising from financial assistance provided under the TARP remains outstanding.
``(B) A provision for the recovery by such TARP recipient of any bonus, retention award, or incentive compensation paid to a senior executive officer and any of the next 20 most highly-compensated employees of the TARP recipient based on statements of earnings, revenues, gains, or other criteria that are later found to be materially inaccurate.
``(C) A prohibition on such TARP recipient making any golden parachute payment to a senior executive officer or any of the next 5 most highly-compensated employees of the TARP recipient during the period in which any obligation arising from financial assistance provided under the TARP remains outstanding.
``(D)(i) A prohibition on such TARP recipient paying or accruing any bonus, retention award, or incentive compensation during the period in which any obligation arising from financial assistance provided under the TARP remains outstanding, except that any prohibition developed under this paragraph shall not apply to the payment of long-term restricted stock by such TARP recipient, provided that such long-term restricted stock--
``(I) does not fully vest during the period in which any obligation arising from financial assistance provided to that TARP recipient remains outstanding;
``(II) has a value in an amount that is not greater than 1/3 of the total amount of annual compensation of the employee receiving the stock; and
``(III) is subject to such other terms and conditions as the Secretary may determine is in the public interest.
``(ii) The prohibition required under clause (i) shall apply as follows:
``(I) For any financial institution that received financial assistance provided under the TARP equal to less than $25,000,000, the prohibition shall apply only to the most highly compensated employee of the financial institution.
``(II) For any financial institution that received financial assistance provided under the TARP equal to at least $25,000,000, but less than $250,000,000, the prohibition shall apply to at least the 5 most highly-compensated employees of the financial institution, or such higher number as the Secretary may determine is in the public interest with respect to any TARP recipient.
``(III) For any financial institution that received financial assistance provided under the TARP equal to at least $250,000,000, but less than $500,000,000, the prohibition shall apply to the senior executive officers and at least the 10 next most highly-compensated employees, or such higher number as the Secretary may determine is in the public interest with respect to any TARP recipient.
``(IV) For any financial institution that received financial assistance provided under the TARP equal to $500,000,000 or more, the prohibition shall apply to the senior executive officers and at least the 20 next most highly-compensated employees, or such higher number as the Secretary may determine is in the public interest with respect to any TARP recipient.
``(iii) The prohibition required under clause (i) shall not be construed to prohibit any bonus payment required to be paid pursuant to a written employment contract executed on or before February 11, 2009, as such valid employment contracts are determined by the Secretary or the designee of the Secretary.
``(E) A prohibition on any compensation plan that would encourage manipulation of the reported earnings of such TARP recipient to enhance the compensation of any of its employees.
``(F) A requirement for the establishment of a Board Compensation Committee that meets the requirements of subsection (c).
Apparently Wall Street is concerned about this leading to brain drain.
Cool, looking forward to some more good graduate student applications from people with some years out on the Street under their belt.
We can always use some quants...
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Thanks for keeping an eye on this.
Hooray for science funding!
That being said, the sad thing about the exec pay clauses is it will probably just drive those executives (and other prospective execs) away from the banks and to the private side (hedge funds). Not to say that the finance doesn't need a brain drain (smart people not leaving science as much would probably be a good thing in the long run), but many have pointed out that even the execs staying public side would probably cause salary increases to [somewhat] adjust for the restriction. I have no problem with some limits on cash bonuses (i.e. requiring longer term incentives), but I can't see how putting caps on bonuses could lead to anything but temporarily happier tax payers and fewer good execs.
I somehow don't think the hedgies have the resources or the inclination right now to pick up a lot of bank execs.
A big part of the problem with the finanical industry over the last decade+ was the decoupling of short term incentives like bonuses from the risk associated with the investment choices.
This pushes poor decision making - for an individual in the system it is rational to make high risk decisions in expectation of short term gains and large annual bonus, and figure you will either be gone or can walk away when it goes bad and short term paper profits become long term loss.
(Of course if they were really rational they'd structure their lives to live on base income plus investment income and save the bonuses, which makes loss of bonus have less impact).
So this is a first step in decoupling this incentive, pushing bonuses to medium term and equity sharing. Not perfect, haste makes bad law, but arguable better than it was.
If companies losing money want to pay high base salaries in the current business environment, then they can discuss that with their shareholders. Why should the top 0.1% be immune to wage deflation?
Many people bidding for some of these government funded construction projects will be left out in the cold if they do not have their OSHA training. Several states (NY, CT, MA, RI, NH, and MO) have laws requiring workers on publically-funded jobsites to take the OSHA 10 hour construction training class, like the ones available at www.osha10hourtraining.com . Without the OSHA card, they cannot get on the site. Many general contractors also have the same requirement for minimum OSHA training. So be prepared, do not wait until the last minute or you may be disqualified from getting onto the jobsite.