The ramifications of taxing the AIG bonuses
Yesterday Congress voted to tax the bonuses the AIG employees received. A lot of people are mad at them gettign the bonuses, Michelle Malkin among others is mad that Congress is doing anything about it.
You can find the full roll call vote on HR 1586, tax cheat Charlie Rangel’s ass-covering, after-the-fact AIG bonus tax here. I have broken out the 85 Republicans (led by GOP Minority Whip Eric Cantor) who voted with Rangel and the Democrat demagogues.
Now, in Michelle’s world ( and most of her commentors ), anything the Republicans do that cooperates with the Democrats is bad. Because Charlie Rangel sponsored it, it’s ass-covering, after-the-fact, stuff.
I see it a lot differently. Some of these Congressmen might be blithering idiots, but most are not. The ones that are not I am sure see this as largely symbolic to the next bail-out recipient who thinks they can get away with what AIG did. They know that law strictly forbids them from passing punitive legislation that voids pre-existing contractual obligations. So, once it gets to court, if it does, it will be voided quickly. But, what it will do, regardless of the courts, is send a very clear message to the public that this type of behavior will not be tolerated in the future. So, I’m not quite so down on this statement by Congress. Now, if she wants to point fingers at the Republicans that helped create this situation, then she needs to keep reminding people whenever she attacks Republicans who vote for anything attempting to remedy this mess of legislation, then she, and others, need to go back and call out those that did indeed create the mess in the first place. In my opinion, that would still be the TARP reform act of January 21, 2009. On the Republican side, that list is a lot shorter:
- Vern Buchanon
- David Camp
- John Campbell
- Michael Castle
- Lincoln Diaz-Balart
- Mario Diaz-Balart
- Vernon Ehlers
- Peter Hoekstra
- Leonard Lance
- Steven LaTourette
- Thaddeus McCotter
- Candice Miller
- Dave Reichert
- Michael Rogers
- Aaron Schock
- Mark Souder
- Michael Turner
- Fredrick Upton
And of course, the ultimate blame falls on Chris Dodd for taking out the restriction in the first place. I think he needs to be sitting beside the AIG director during this inquisition explaining why he took out the restriction that compelled AIG to make the bonuses in the first place.
However, I’m sure Nancy Pelosi will have none of that.
That leaves people like me to come to my own conclusions. Here’s one:
| Contributor | Total |
|---|---|
| Citigroup Inc | $316,494 |
| United Technologies | $264,400 |
| SAC Capital Partners | $248,500 |
| American International Group | $223,478 |
| Royal Bank of Scotland | $218,500 |
| Bear Stearns | $201,000 |
| Goldman Sachs | $180,200 |
| Credit Suisse Group | $157,050 |
| Morgan Stanley | $156,600 |
| JPMorgan Chase & Co | $134,050 |
| Merrill Lynch | $132,950 |
| Lehman Brothers | $122,300 |
| Hartford Financial Services | $117,150 |
It seems to me that Chris Dodd should never have had a position to make that call in the first place. He’s got a massive conflict of interest going here that needs to be explained both to Congress and to the public. I mean, it seems it would have cut dramatically into his contributions if those donating to him relied on those bonuses to make their campaign contributions dontcha think?
And, we don’t know who those getting the bonuses are.
So, if the public, and some Congressmen, feel that those working at AIG should pay their bonuses back after the fact, then I think it only fair that the person that enabled those bonuses in the first place pay back to the taxpayors the $200,000 he received to eliminate that perceived conflict of interest that led to this fiasco in the first place.
But, it’s so much easier to blame the here and now for this mess than it is to keep focusing on the root of the problem and hold the Democrats accountable for the mess that is here and now that puts Republicans in such a jam that they can not even vote for a symbolic gesture without big-name commentors thrashing them publicly.
Constitution Club
[...] Obama is amassing a huge liability of contradicting himself. If he is truly “stunned” when he heard of the bonuses, then he can not possibly be happy with the person that approved them. By removing the bonus clause from the TARP legislation in January, Geithner became the person responsible for them. Additionally, the “culture” Obama referred to was enacted January 21, 2009, when Chris Dodd sent the l…. [...]
I’m having a tough time following your convoluted logic. Admittedly, it is a convoluted issue, but it is unclear if you hold AIG, the Democrats, the Republicans, the Obama playground crowd, the Bush Administration, or God, or all of the above, responsible for the events of the last two, to six, months. Just far too many double, triple, and quadruple negatives.
When I first started out in software development, my mentor and manager pointed out that I should avoid negative logic testing whenever possible, as the negative path eventually becomes too difficult to follow; it is a shame that the media, and most bloggers, ignore this basic concept.
Perhaps you could restate your position using positive logic testing?
As a software developer, as I am, you must be familiar with the term GIGO. My point is people like Michelle Malkin are letting the people who created this TARP bonus situation off the hook by now focusing blame on a tangeant outcome of the mess they created. I am simply trying to re-focus on those that did. And yeah, it’s a long list. But come 2010, the people who created this mess need to be held to the fire, not the people who tried, even symbolicly, tried to do something about it. That’s not the message people complaining about the tax vote are sending.