The Washington Post reports recent efforts by Congress to limit executive pay may fail because of a major loophole in the law. When Congress approved the $700 billion financial bailout, lawmakers included a mechanism for reviewing executive compensation and penalizing firms that break the rules. But at the last minute, the Bush administration insisted on a one-sentence change to the provision. The change stipulated that the penalty would apply only to firms that received bailout funds by selling troubled assets to the government in an auction. At the time, the Treasury Department had said it planned to use auctions, but since then it has reversed course. The change has effectively repealed the only enforcement mechanism in the law dealing with lavish pay for top executives. Republican Sen. Charles Grassley said, “The flimsy executive-compensation restrictions in the original bill are now all but gone.”