The right is making a big deal over a bill the Democrats voted down to “recoup” the bonuses from AIG. Here is the text of the bill:
Section 1: The Secretary of the Treasury shall, notwithstanding any other provision of law, implement a plan within the next two weeks to recoup or stay the payment of AIG bonuses.
Section 2: No additional funds may be provided to AIG until the bonuses are returned.
Section 3: Any future bonus payments, of any kind, by TARP fund recipients who have not within two weeks of enactment of the bill repaid the government in full, must be approved in advance by Treasury.
Section 4: Any future contractual obligations to make bonus payments of any kind entered into by TARP fund recipients who have not within two weeks of enactment of the bill repaid the government in full must be approved in advance by Treasury.
Eric Cantor lead this outrage with his posting about the Democrats “letting AIG keep their bonuses”.
Notice though all the loopholes in this Republican bill. Notice also how it targets only AIG. Not shocking from the party that has been balking at any attempt to stop bonuses at any of the TARP recipients. It looks like this was nothing more than another one of those attempts:
House Democratic leaders announced that a bill designed to tax the bonuses out of existence will come to the House floor Thursday, mere days after the news of the $165 million payout to employees of the embattled American International Group.
The legislation would levy a stiff 90 percent tax on bonuses paid by any financial firm receiving more than $5 billion in federal funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Fund.
The Democrats are going after ANY company paying out these bonuses, while the Republicans want to target only AIG, an attempt that can only be described as a show that they are “mad”.
Again the Republicans continually balked at stopping any of these bonuses. Now we even got all the right wing talking heads out there, under the leadership of Limbaugh, trying to downplay these bonuses. It’s funny how it was so bad on Sunday, then came Monday and Rush was defending the bonuses, and by Tuesday we have all the wingnuts back tracking.
And remember this. The Republicans were the ones saying that the auto manufacturers needed to renegotiate their labor contracts. The Republicans are the ones who think that the multi-million dollar per person contracts of Wall Street are find and dandy. Perhaps that explains why Dana Perino is out trying to say that the people receiving multi million dollar bonuses are “middle class’”. That must make 95% of this country lower class.
Do you see yet why you are in trouble Republicans? Of course not, that would indicate a little bit of common sense on your part.