So much for Obama's populist masterstroke:

Those much-promoted, populist-pleasing salary caps for corporate executives who take Troubled Asset Relief Program money may be scrapped for the simple reason that they'll cost the government money. A report by the Congressional Budget Office estimated that pay caps would deprive the Treasury of $10.8 billion in lost tax revenue over the next 10 years. It's just too much for some Democrats to swallow.

They're going to need that revenue if they intend to continue deficit spending well after the recession ends. Which they do. This is what happens when you start throwing around literally unimaginable amounts of taxpayer money:

It's difficult to visualize a million dollars, much less a million million dollars. But that's the true threshold cracked by the "$825" billion "stimulus" bill, when you include $347 billion in estimated interest costs associated with the incremental borrowing required. So how big is the resulting $1.2 trillion spending package? Big enough to dwarf any government program in history, even after adjusting for inflation. It's bigger than the New Deal and the Iraq War combined. The interest alone will be costlier than the Louisiana Purchase or going to the moon. The $18 billion in bonuses paid legally by private Wall Street firms in 2008 - decried by the President as "shameful" - is vanishingly small in comparison (smaller even than the bill's incremental food stamps expenditures).

On the other hand, they don't really have a choice. The cost of failure is, well, yeah: