UPDATED – AIG-Gate: Questions of the Day
Even if the administration is telling the truth and they for a fact didn’t know about the AIG bonuses till this month, that still doesn’t get them out of the doghouse. Why? Because it could be argued that Congress and Obama wanted to protect bonus obligations assumed before February 11, 2009:
Why is Obama so outraged and surprised?…[H]e signed the very bill that quite clearly made those bonuses legal — the $787 billion stimulus package…How can he, the president, or anyone else who voted for the stimulus, suddenly act surprised?
What? Didn’t they read the bill?
UPDATE: At OpenLeft, dissecting the administration’s economic credibility gap. The White House has been contradicting itself since the Inauguration on all sorts of stuff, not just on this AIG fiasco. So Id’ say the credibility gap goes beyond the economic. But far from me to argue with a leftie blogger.
One thing’s for sure: for a White House headed by an attorney and former law professor – and staffed to the hilts with attorneys – it’s pretty embarrassing to hear them equivocate so much on whether they can “unpay” the bonuses or not. But of course, the political theater wouldn’t be much of a show if they hadn’t initially pretended something could be done about them. The Federal government has a lot of flexibility when it comes to modifying contracts made with the United States. That is not the case here, but the bottom line is that federal law – as noted above – makes the bonuses legal. And that federal law is none other than the “Stimulus” bill.
ANOTHER ONE: Is it Dodd’s fault or the Executive Branch’s? Dodd inserted the loophole in the Stimulus, true. But the President signed it into law and his Treasury enforces that law. So why make this difficult? Let’s just tell it like it is and say it’s the Democrats fault. Or what? Should we blame this on Bush as well?
Not to get ahead of myself here, but since Dodd is in increasingly hot water over his “VIP” Countrywide loan deal, will Obama just throw him under the bus to deflect further criticism? We’ll find out soon enough…
ONE MORE: Politico: Why AIG outrage rings hollow.
STILL ANOTHER: “It’s getting harder and harder to explain why people losing homes and jobs are obliged to write more giant cheques to scoundrels – especially when Washington is so obviously not in charge.”
