"The American people have said no, and they have said, 'Hell no, give us our money back,'" -Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D.
While 165 million dollars is but a minuscule amount in the grand-scheme of things, the AIG bonuses has still caused a sense of injustice to manifest the hearts of many Americans. (Sorry if that sounds odd, I just got the sudden urge to use the word "manifest".) Yet, because of this public outrage, the U.S. House of Reps has voted today to heavily tax the "AIG bailout bonuses".
"The only way to get their money back is to tax it back," said Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y.
Approved with a vote of 328 to 93, this bill would slap a 90% tax on the bonus money that the AIG executives received. Yet with "justice served", politicians are still pointing their fingers at one another for "making loopholes" that allowed AIG to even give out these bonuses. A small provision in last month's stimulus bill which resulted in this loophole was part of a measure written by Democratic Senator Chris Dodd, which gave many house Republicans a target to shoot at.
"Listen, this bill is nothing more then an attempt for everyone to cover their butt up here on Capitol Hill," said House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. "It's full of loopholes."
Personally, I think this is not a time for attacking the other side because we are having economic problems (read: crisis). I think I've said it before in previous posts but I'll say it again. Right now isn't exactly the time to find people to blame. At least they managed to agree to get AIG to return some of the money. But then again, the public is so much in support of AIG returning the bonuses that not voting for this bill could have been really bad for many of these politicians who, after all, need to keep their ratings up for reelection.
Photo (and most of my other photos) from ABCnews.com
1 comment:
Ah, reelection, the fueling drive of all politicians.
Quite frankly, the whole bonuses thing could have easily been seen coming. Remember the first big bailout last September when the Bush administration was still in office? Then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson asked for all of this money from Congress with no strings attached and no possibility for oversight or judicial review anywhere along the line, claiming that it was necessary for the bailout to succeed. Well, Obama is proving him wrong with the immense amount of accountability coming via Recovery.gov. (Eventually. Not much up there yet other than a timeline and some ARRA rhetoric.)
As for the bonuses, $165 million may be a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things (we are in the midst of macroeconomics in class, after all), but it's a heck of a lot of money to any average person. So one CEO gets an extra $1-2 million? My family lives on $90,000/year in one of the most expensive places in the country and we work our bottoms of in terms of jobs in order to sustain that. And all of us reading this blog live in the exact same place, so we understand how difficult it can be to stay afloat around here financially. And these dodos who screwed up think that they're entitled to extra money on top of their salary that exceeds my family's annual income by more than tenfold? Especially when that extra money is already coming straight from taxpayers?
This isn't about money. This is about principle. This is about reminding the rich that they have rules to follow as well, and that they are still a part of this country. The rich had their free ride for far too long and they abused that free ride big time, and now we are telling them that no, we are all in this economic crisis together. You made the mess and you've got to at least help clean it up. That's all there is to it.
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