Sens. Boxer, Grassley team up to cut taxpayer-funded pay to contractors

Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) have put forward legislation that would limit the use of public money to fund the salaries of all government contractors.

Under their “Commonsense Contractor Compensation act,” S. 2198, taxpayer money could only be used to fund $400,000 of the top five employees of government contractors, the same annual salary of the President of the United States.

{mosads}Under current law, taxpayer funds can be used to fund salaries of the top five employees up to $693,951.

“[W]e will keep fighting to rein in exorbitant taxpayer-funded salaries for contractors,” Boxer said. “There is simply no reason that taxpayers should fund government reimbursements for private contractor salaries at a rate more than three times what Cabinet Secretaries earn.” Cabinet secretaries are currently paid $200,000.

“The direct taxpayer-funded salaries of government contractors clearly need to be contained, and this legislation is designed to do so,” Grassley said of the bill. “There’s no justification for these payments to be higher than the salary of the President of the United States.”

Their bill follows up on language they successfully attached to the National Defense Authorization Act last year, that set limits on taxpayer-funded salaries for defense contractors. Boxer noted this week that the latest study showed there were 7.6 million government contractors, most of which — 5.2 million — were defense contractors.