ObamaOdrama

According to the AP, Senate Republicans are calling for a little consideration before Congress makes another bad decision:

WASHINGTON – Senate Republicans are drawing out a flap that has made the Obama administration squirm, applying the brakes to Democratic attempts to quickly tax away most of the bonuses at troubled insurance giant AIG and other bailed-out companies.

Sen. Jon Kyl, the Republicans’ vote counter, blocked Democratic efforts Thursday evening to bring up the Senate version of the tax bill to recoup most of the $165 million paid out by AIG last weekend and other bonuses in 2009. The House had swiftly approved its version of the bill earlier in the day.

By rushing, Kyl said, Democrats were letting populist outrage trump informed decision making in the Senate, which is supposed to be insulated from the pressures of public passion.

“I don’t believe that Congress should rush to pass yet another piece of hastily crafted legislation in this very toxic atmosphere, at least without understanding the facts and the potential unintended consequences,” Kyl said on the Senate floor. “Frankly, I think that’s how we got into the current mess.”

One of the most reasonable ideas to come out of Washington in some time.

I recently questioned how long the government would continue trying to throw AIG under the bus for this whole bonusgate mess. Apparently just long enough for the politicians’ instinct for self-preservation to kicks in.

It’s basic human nature. If you can call politicians human. In the end it doesn’t matter if they are Republican, Democrat, or Independent — no one wants this stink on them and have to face the very mob they helped gin up. But there appears to be a sort of honor among these thieves and rather than give up one of their own they will offer up a bigger “prize.”

Just a few days ago as the public eye shifted in his direction, Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) “confessed” the Obama administration pressured him to clear the way for the AIG bonuses.

According to FoxNews:

Dodd, a five-term senator, was already facing a tough re-election contest in 2010. He says the Obama administration insisted he modify his proposal to rein in bonuses at companies getting billions of dollars in financial bailouts so that it would only apply to payments agreed to in the future — thus clearing the way for the AIG payouts.

It was that or have his executive pay limits dropped altogether from the $787 billion stimulus measure that passed last month, Dodd says.

He agreed to the changes “in order to preserve the amendment,” Dodd told reporters Thursday. “They sought it; I didn’t. They asked for the changes … and so we agreed to those changes.”

On the Joe and Mika Radio Show, Maxine Waters (D-Cali.) fighting for her own survival threw Dodd a lifeline and questioned Obama’s understanding of the facts including the part the Treasury played in the AIG bonuses.

Even Republicans are supporting Dodd’s confession in order to lend legitimacy to their call for the resignation of Treasury Secretary Tim “Turbo Tax” Geithner.

Florida Republican Rep. Connie Mack called for Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to lose his job Wednesday, becoming the first Capitol Hill lawmaker to call for his ouster over AIG’s using tens of millions of taxpayer dollars for executive bonuses.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., later joined in the call Wednesday.

Mack told FOX News that Geithner should resign or the administration should fire him.

“The American people certainly don’t see any competence in him. And I think he’s got a lot of questions to answer,” he said.

Mack said in a written statement released earlier in the day that President Obama should nominate a new treasury secretary with “the experience and leadership skills America deserves.”

“Quite simply, the Timothy Geithner experience has been a disaster. The Treasury Department is in disarray. Taxpayer dollars are being wasted,” he said.

Honor among thieves indeed.

Not to be outdone by her other half, Michelle Obama surprised a group of students at Anacostia High School in Washington, D.C.

Here is an excerpt from the Chicago Sun-Times article:

Mrs. Obama told the students it’s cool to be smart.

“And I didn’t care whether it was cool because I remember there were kids around my neighborhood who would say, ‘Ooh, you talk funny, you talk like a white girl.’ I heard that growing up my whole life. I was like, I don’t even know what that means, but you know what, I’m still getting my A.”

I was like… OMG!

Fox Business uncovers emails regarding the governments advance knowledge of AIG’s intent to provide bonuses.

In a Nov. 5 e-mail to a Treasury and Federal Reserve officials, who were under the Bush administration, an outside attorney working on the transaction wrote, “We indicated that UST (United States Treasury) … wants to put in place a limitation on annual bonuses that assure that (AIG: 1.2, -0.39, -24.53%) executives/employees will not be enriched out of TARP funds.”

But the e-mail indicates AIG officials pushed back on the proposal. In a section of the e-mail discussing proposed limits on severance packages for AIG employees, the attorney wrote, “They were slack jawed at the idea of imposing the restriction throughout the entire population, especially worldwide.” AIG proposed that Treasury apply such limits “to a class of partners and senior partners (700).”

At another spot in the e-mail, the attorney said about AIG executives, “They will think about ways to deal with the ‘no enrichment’ point. In this connection they again raised the size of the applicable group and kept coming back to ‘700’ as a meaningful, and possibly workable, group for limitations.”

The e-mail also indicates that in their deliberations, government officials were concerned about the effect of compensation on recruiting and retaining AIG employees.

“We also indicated that all parties understand that the restrictions must be designed so that the business can be operated in a reasonable way, including in terms of recruitment and retention of employees,” the attorney wrote in the e-mail.

The government eventually restricted compensation at AIG to just the top 75 executives.

How much longer can the government get away with throwing AIG under the bus to cover it’s own mistake?

U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) appeared on CNN’s American Morning last week and offered some insight on the AIG outrage.

CHETRY: … AIG debacle, congressman, what do you think? What do you think about why it happened?

PAUL: Well, it happened because we did something that was outrageous. These bonuses are outrageous — $165 million is a lot of money — but so is $700 billion of unconstitutional appropriations. That’s where the problem came from.

So yes, people are concentrating on these bonuses right now, but they’re missing the point. The point is that we shouldn’t be in the business of bailing out all these companies. And we don’t even know where the rest of the money went. We just discovered — probably inadvertently — that there were bonuses.

Now everybody is outraged — which they should be — so what do they do? They passed $700 billion worth of unconstitutional appropriations; then they come in and they discover this. The public gets notice of it, so the Congress has to act and feel outraged. So they pass a bill which is an ex post facto bill as well as a bill of attainder, which is unconstitutional, so they’re using the tax code to punish people. So they do one harm — one thing wrong — they create a problem an unintended consequence; then they go back, and they will solve the problem by more of the same.

If Ron Paul keeps this up, I may have to really start taking him more seriously.