Legislative Lashings?

Congress Bares its Teeth at AIG, Misses the Point

The Congress OK'd a Punitive Excise Tax on bonuses paid to AIG executives worth over $250,000 today to attempt to regain the $165 Million paid out beginning at the end of last week. I've covered this over the last two days and wish that this issue would go away just a little bit.

Democrats, led by Representative Charles Rangel of New York, pushed the bill through the House with astounding numbers on both sides of the aisle, the greatest act of bi-partisanship in this session. Yet there were six Democrats that were political strong enough to stand up to this ridiculous piece of legislation that is purported to retrieve taxpayer money, but is, in fact a, politically speaking, cowardly move to make some kind of movement on the AIG situation without actually solving anything. Way to go, Congress. Way to respond to a symptom and not the illness.

But Congress isn't alone on this one. President Obama echoed an eagerness to sign such a bill once it reaches his desk in cooperation with Congress' and the People's Outrage. Meanwhile House Republicans are seeming to take the stand that I am in this mess: Stop trying to CYA and fix the problems! And the Democratic-controlled House is saying that this measure is the only solution to the problem, apparently unaware of any kind of discussions that are currently going on in committee regarding the return of the bonus millions to the people.

But the real issue here is that while these executives have done really terrible things and they don't deserve the money that they are receiving, it is not okay for Congress to rip those bonuses out of executives' hands through an excise tax. This is where the Executives of AIG should throw a Tea Party, not those fools angry about the government's marginal increase in spending. These bonuses were offered to keep AIG afloat, before the U.S. Government stepped in and as pointed out by some, including Rush Limbaugh, it's not right for Congress to start a pitchfork raid of these people who were promised these bonuses.

It is a complicated issue, the AIG disaster, and there are many people to blame for this situation. But it's my opinion, as I've said for the past couple of days, to move past punishment and focus on fixing the problem. But I guess if we want to focus on getting our elected officials to punish AIG, they are doing a fine job of that. Let's punish them into oblivion and hopefully we can crash the whole system - isn't that why we bailed them out in the first place?

**UPDATE: From Rep Campbell, an interesting viewpoint about Californian's and the Bonus Excise Tax

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Today's Political Thought
We currently have a fracturing Democratic Senate Caucus that will leave three voting factions - instead of having a third party, we'll just have two Democratic Parties and one Republican?!?!