The real outrage, however, is that we now learn that Obama's treasury secretary, Timothy Geitner, not only knew about the bonuses in advance, but with Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd's assistance, inserted a provision in the $400+ billion spending bill that preserved AIG's bonuses. In a New York Times article on the fallout affecting Senator Dodd, Geitner takes the blame for protecting the bonuses:
On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner came to Mr. Dodd’s defense, saying in an interview with CNN that his staff had raised concerns about whether the legislation limiting executive compensation “was vulnerable to legal challenge.”
Dodd - the chair of the Senate Banking Committee and person responsible for the portion of the legislation providing the loophole, was not forthcoming about his involvement. The NYT article went on
This week’s uproar was triggered largely by Mr. Dodd himself, when he provided conflicting answers about the provision that allowed the bonuses at A.I.G. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the company’s employees, political action committees and subsidiaries have made campaign contributions of nearly $300,000 to Mr. Dodd since 1989.
Initially, Mr. Dodd said he did not know how the loophole got into the legislation that sought to crack down on executive compensation. But then in an interview Wednesday with CNN, he acknowledged that his staff helped write the revisions after receiving a request from the Treasury Department.
Aside from the asinine attempts at covering up what was done, the question we should be asking is why did NONE of the 534 other elected officials raise any concern about this provision? The answer is pretty clear - the $787 Billion stimulus bill was rushed through Congress, and the controlling parties would not let a full debate come to the floor. Provisions were inserted in backroom meetings and both houses were given a mere 24 hours to pass the bill. No debate was allowed. That, my friends is not how democracy is supposed to work.
The reason this happened is that our elected Senators and Representatives failed to perform their job. It is their job to represent us and debate the legislation. I am very skeptical whether any of the 435 Representatives or 100 Senators even read the full bill before it was voted upon. America, we were cheated. Our elected officials are no better than the greedy bastards that took the bailout money and lined their own pockets. In fact, it is worse. It is nothing short of a breach of trust.
We need and deserve better representation. Ask your congressman why he or she voted for a stimulus bill that allowed recipients of federal money to pay huge bonuses? Listen to what they say and ask them if they personally read the 1000 page bill before they voted on it. If they told you they did, they are lying. If they admit they did not, ask them to step down. It is time that we either throw all the bums out of Congress. At the very least, we need to make sure that our representatives are effective and that we have a voice. Consider insisting on our Constitutional right to have one representative for every 30,000 inhabitants (see, Taxation With Representation Is Not So Good Either.) With more members of Congress, we the people will have more control and the elected officials, individually, will be less powerful, albeit collectively we will all be more powerful. If none of the 535 members had the foresight or fortitude to question the $787 Billion dollar spending bill, then maybe, just maybe increasing the size of the representatives to 2500 would produce one or two who would stand up for what is right. It is time to act now before it is too late.
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