Sen. McCaskill yesterday announced a bill that would limit the pay of any executives working for a recipient of the bailout TARP funds to the same level of the salary of the U.S. President. Under her plan, no executive of such a company could make more than $400,000, benefits and bonuses included. In her remarks on the Senate floor, McCaskill called the Wall Street executives “idiots” after it was reported that in New York alone corporate executives gave each other $18.4 billion in bonuses for 2008. President Obama has a bit more subduedly called the finding “shameful.”

Politically, this was an ingenius framing of the issue. It’s difficult to argue that any corporate executive — let alone one who oversaw the financial ruin his or her company — deserves to make more than the President of the United States. Policy-wise, this bill is a no-brainer. It’s bad enough that taxpayer money has to pay for corporate irresponsibility; it must not be used to personally line the pockets of fat cats. The argument that the financial industry culture somehow requires these big salaries reeks of absurdity — it was this very same culture of flaunted wealth and insatiable greed which threw us into this meltdown to begin with. If they begged the government for help, they should be okay with a prescription of moderate rehab. I somewhat doubt that $400,000 a year should be too devastating on their bottom line.

And, really, honestly, could they not see this coming? Are they really that out-of-touch with regular Americans to realize the outcry this would cause? Sadly, it appears so.