The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
Just Wait Till Last Year
Politicians in Washington have been denouncing American International Group, the insurance company that has received some $170 billion in federal bailout funds, for paying retention bonuses amounting to just under 1/1,000th of this sum to executives in its financial products division. AIG says it is contractually obligated to pay out the bonuses, but maybe a more effective argument would be: Hey, forget it! This is last year’s business!
Don’t laugh. That’s the argument the Obama administration used, as the Washington Post noted in an editorial earlier this month:
The congressional budget process–and process is an awfully polite word for the current chaos–gets uglier and uglier. The $410 billion omnibus spending bill that is crawling to final passage and an unenthusiastic signature comes nearly halfway through the fiscal year. . . . President Obama’s not-my-problem stance may be canny politics: Why put any political capital into this one when there are so many other difficult fights to come? But his asserted stance that this is, in the words of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, “last year’s business,” borders on irresponsible. This may be last year’s business, but Mr. Obama is this year’s president.
The Post editorial points out that notwithstanding Obama’s stated opposition to earmarks, the spending law contained some $8 billion worth of them–nearly 50 times the amount of the AIG bonuses.
Also angry is a leading Hill Democrat, according to a Post report:
“I warned them this would be met with an unprecedented level of outrage,” Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), the chairman of the banking committee and part of a group of senators who pressed Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner to stop the bonuses, said [Monday].
It turns out, however, that the bonuses are legally protected under last month’s so-called stimulus law. In a most amazing coincidence, this provision is known as the Dodd amendment, as Fox Business Channel reports:
While the Senate was constructing the $787 billion stimulus last month, Dodd added an executive-compensation restriction to the bill. The provision, now called “the Dodd Amendment” by the Obama Administration provides an “exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009”–which exempts the very AIG bonuses Dodd and others are now seeking to tax.
Dodd’s original amendment did not include that exemption, and the Connecticut Senator denied inserting the provision.
“I can’t point a finger at someone who was responsible for putting those dates in,” Dodd told FOX. “I can tell you this much, when my language left the senate, it did not include it. When it came back, it did.”
“Because of negotiations with the Treasury Department and the bill Conferees, several modifications were made,” Dodd Spokesperson Kate Szostak in a response to FOX Business.
If that doesn’t give you confidence in our political leaders in Washington, maybe this will, from Politico:
Sen. Charles Grassley is so angry over AIG bonuses that he says the executives should resign or kill themselves.
In a comment aired this afternoon on WMT, an Iowa radio station, Grassley (R-Iowa) said: “The first thing that would make me feel a little bit better towards them if they’d follow the Japanese model and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say I’m sorry, and then either do one of two things–resign, or go commit suicide.”
If a Democratic senator said anything that foolish, he’d be vice president by now.
Obama, this year’s president, is also last year’s junior senator from Illinois, in which capacity, according to a chart posted by blogger Jeff Lehner, he was Congress’s second-biggest recipient of donations from AIG employees. The biggest? Chris Dodd. Washington’s Examiner drolly terms Obama’s take “a $101,332 bonus from AIG.”
Bloomberg argues that the president’s “attempt to harness public anger” at the AIG bonuses “may backfire on him as Republicans try to redirect that anger toward his administration.” Didn’t someone once observe that when you point at someone else, three fingers are pointing back at you?
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.
