AIG Bonuses

So now Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, and President Obama are hopping mad over the $165 million in contractually obligated, performance based, bonuses given to certain AIG employees over the weekend. In fact, President Obama has ordered Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner to explore all legal avenues for getting that money back. Unfortunately, President Obama and the rest of Congress has no one to blame but themselves for this mess. As a member of the Senate in September 2008, Obama voted yes on TARP. There were no strings attached in TARP. It basically gave the Secretary of the Treasury czar like powers to bail out the financial system.

So now they're mad that $165 million of the taxpayers money is going to bonuses. Mr. President, $165 million is such a miniscule amount of the money that you've given AIG. Perhaps when you were in the Senate, you could have fought for some conditions under which companies had to abide by if they took taxpayer money. But you didn't.

Perhaps you also could have shown the same outrage when the $410 billion spending bill hit your desk last week filled with about $18 billion in earmarks. Instead of vetoing the bill, you signed it and rationalized that $18 billion was such a small number considering the final total of the bill. Well, according to that logic, you need to suck it up this week and stop pretending to be outraged at $165 million out of the $90 billion you've already given them. And if you try to take back that money, those employees will sue you. Can't wait to see that public relations nightmare.