Harry Reid: “I have been called upon in the past, as have other Members of this body, to interfere with what goes on in…”

“I have been called upon in the past, as have other Members of this body, to interfere with what goes on in corporations--that is, to tell corporations they are limited in what they can pay their corporate executives. I have chosen not to become involved in that. I truly believe, even though some of these compensation packages are outlandish, in my opinion, it is not up to me. In our free enterprise system, it is up to the board of the directors of those corporations to determine what someone is worth. It is inappropriate, in this free enterprise system in which we are living, we take away the ability of corporations to run corporations. I have always looked at the salaries of ballplayers. We have a 14-year-old boy named Freddie Adu, who is the highest paid player in the American Soccer League. Now, are they paying a 14-year-old boy too much money? He is making more than people who have played soccer for 20 and 25 years. It is kind of up to them to determine how much money he should get. The average salary of a professional Major League baseball player in America today is around $2 million a year. That is a lot of money for a person who bats a ball, throws a ball, catches a ball, and runs around the bases, but that is what they get in our free market system. They get a lot of money. My friend Greg Maddux from Las Vegas made $15 million last year. He pitched about 30 times. I don't know how much that amounts to, but that is a lot of money he makes.”