Chris Dodd - From CNN.com
Now this… This is classic. From CNN
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Sen. Christopher Dodd on Monday suggested a tax provision to recoup the bonuses for executives of ailing insurance giant AIG.
Dodd, D-Connecticut, said the notion is in the “earliest of thinking” and has not been settled on as a way to resolve the issue, which has set off outrage in Washington and across the country.
The tax would apply only to those at AIG who have received bonuses. The provision would help the government get back the money in the form of tax revenue.
You have got to be kidding me. I can’t believe that you’re even thinking about putting a tax on a specific group of people because they were paid a bonus that you don’t like? What’s next, anyone who gets paid on the 10th of April will get taxed at 75%, but if you get paid on the 14th you pay no tax? This is getting completely out of hand.
President Obama on Monday expressed dismay and anger over the bonuses to executives at AIG, which has received $173 billion in U.S. government bailouts over the past six months.
Well, you might have thought about putting restrictions on pay as a condition of getting the funding. Had you thought of that first, this whole business of getting upset about the bonus payouts wouldn’t be so ridiculous. Look, as a taxpayer it pisses me off that my money is being used to fund the operations of this company, but I am more pissed off that the government didn’t properly oversee how the money was being dispersed, or place restrictions on what it could be used for.
Since the government messed up, they want to just make up retro-active laws as they go along. There is absolutely no way that any private investor is going to want to play ball in this environment. Who knows, next thing you know the government will decide that any returns over 12% are excessive and will be taxed at 100%, and that law will go into effect as of 5 years ago.
Look, the government screwed up. They bailed out a company that should have been dissolved. Plain and simple. They didn’t do it properly, and now they can’t just go and modify all of the rules. Suck it up buttercup. Don’t do it again. Dissolve the organization, and call this whole game off.
Last time I checked, the constitution requires that all appropriations go through the Congress, specifically originating in the House and voted on by the Senate. That means that you guys wrote it, voted for it, and passed it. Period. If bailout money was being granted by the Fed and Treasury, it is the responsibility of the Congress to oversee those actions and ensure they are appropriate. Obviously, the oversight was a little lacking.
“This is a corporation that finds itself in financial distress due to recklessness and greed,” Obama told politicians and reporters in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, where he and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner were unveiling a package to aid the nation’s small businesses.
Obama received support from fellow Democrats, including Dodd, who is the chairman of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.
“This is another outrageous example of executives — including those whose decisions were responsible for the problems that caused AIG’s collapse — enriching themselves at the expense of taxpayers,” Dodd said.
If you hate these people and this business, then why do you keep throwing our good money at it? For the love of God, put them through an orderly bankruptcy.
He noted in a written statement that executives at other companies that received bailout funds have volunteered to forgo bonuses. “There’s no reason why those at AIG shouldn’t do the same,” he said.
Bu there is nothing that says they have to. If they don’t want to, well then you’ll have to deal with it. If you really, really, really didn’t want them to get bonuses, then you should have put it in the contract to get the money. Period.
Obama said he will attempt to block bonuses for AIG, payments he described as an “outrage.”
“Under these circumstances, it’s hard to understand how derivative traders at AIG warranted any bonuses, much less $165 million in extra pay. I mean, how do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat?”
I’ll quit with the broken record on this one… Signing off.
