Shock & Outrage That Could Have Been Avoided
If you’ve been watching the news lately, you’ve been treated to Washington’s favorite parlor game: Whose Fault Was It? Whose fault was it that a bill written in secret and passed without legislative or public review protected bonuses about to be paid to executives at AIG? Whose fault was it that this provision was slipped into the bill at the 11th hour? And whose fault is it that you, the taxpayers, learned of it too late?
When the U.S. House and Senate pass different versions of legislation, they enter into what is called “Conference Committee” to sort out the differences. The bonus provision was not included in the House version nor in the Senate version; it was inserted during this Conference that drafted the final version that both Chambers would eventually pass by partisan margins.
One thing I can tell you is that congressional Republicans had nothing to do with the so-called “stimulus” bill that contained this bonus provision. In fact, every House Republican voted against it. Although we presented our plan to the White House that would have created 6.2 million jobs by the end of 2010, congressional Democrats rejected our ideas outright. Instead, they rammed through an 1,100-page bill that no one had time to read, and now we know why: had lawmakers and the public been given time to read this legislation, American taxpayers might never have been on the hook for these bonus payments and the recent Capitol Hill Circus might never have come to town.
Lawmakers who either knew about the bonus clause and voted for the “stimulus” bill or who didn’t read the bill before voting for it stood before TV cameras to declare their shock and outrage. A nonbinding resolution complimenting the President for his efforts to retrieve the bonuses went down in ironic flames when congressional Democrats couldn’t round up the votes to pass it. And all the while, President Obama has proclaimed that he has full confidence in Treasury Secretary Geithner, despite the fact that Geithner and his office instructed Senate Democrats to add the AIG provision to the bill, then apparently failed to tell the President that the language was in the bill when he signed it.
The sham legislation passed by Congress is completely unnecessary as the Treasury Department has the power to recoup 100 percent of these tax dollars. But if lawmakers were so inclined to pass a bill to get that money back, why not pass the House Republican measure that would have instructed the Treasury Department to recoup 100 percent of the money immediately? How is it a fair deal to taxpayers to get some of the money back a year later instead of all of the money back right now?
One thing that was made clear in the last election is that the American people are sick and tired of politics as usual. They’re tired of outraged politicians railing against the very bills they voted for. They’re tired of the finger pointing and the games. What’s happened on Capitol Hill in the last few weeks isn’t the change that voters thought they were getting. It’s partisan games, parliamentary trickery, class warfare, and tax-and-spend the likes of which we’ve never seen wrapped up in pretty words and supposed altruistic motives.
Bottom Line: Geitner is a clown and must go....but what did the President know and when did he really know it? And what role did his teleprompter play in this?
