After “The economy, stupid!” won him the election, Bill Clinton wanted to do something about irresponsible executives who overpaid themselves while laying off workers. Clinton had an idea: why not end the tax deductibility of salaries over $1 million? Result: If your CEO has a lifestyle that requires a minimum of $2 million per year, you can’t pay him a flat salary — you have to give him such a ridiculously lucrative bonus plan that he’s going to hit that number even in a bad year. So compensation ends up being closer to $3 million.

After Enron and WorldCom showed how much fun it was to spend millions of dollars sending people to jail for losing (or lying about) billions, Congress had an idea: why not increase the legal liability for accounting restatements? Result: that $3 million is no longer risk-free. Suddenly, there’s a possible jail sentence if your CFO mucks things up, or if a rogue currency hedger hides a giant loss. Result? That $3 million gets a bump up to $4.5 million.

Thanks to low interest rates and a high cost of being public (thanks, SarBox!), underperforming CEOs face a higher risk of their company being bought out by private equity firms or shareholder activists. That compensation package needs a higher discount rate, so the result is that the $4.5 million gets bumped up to $6 million or so.

And now, Obama has an idea.