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Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, chair of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and a leader in the effort to examine mushrooming CEO pay packages, distilled the size of the pay problem at a hearing held on executive compensation earlier this year.

"The CEOs of the 500 largest American companies received an average of $15 million each in the year 2006, and that was a 38 percent increase in just one year," Waxman said. "In 1980, CEOs were paid 40 times the average worker; today they are paid 600 times more."