Responses From Lawmakers
President Barack Obama said, "t’s hard to understand how derivative traders at AIG warranted any bonuses, much less $165 million in extra pay. How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat?" and "In the last six months, AIG has received substantial sums from the U.S. Treasury. I’ve asked Secretary Geithner to use that leverage and pursue every legal avenue to block these bonuses and make the American taxpayers whole."
Politicians on both sides of Congress reacted with outrage to the planned bonus payments. Senator Chuck Grassley (Republican, Iowa) said "I would suggest the first thing that would make me feel a little bit better toward them if they'd follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say, I'm sorry, and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide." Senator Chuck Schumer (Democrat, New York) accused AIG of "Alice in Wonderland business practices" and said "It boggles the mind." He has threatened to tax the bonuses at up to 100%. Senator Richard Shelby (Republican, Alabama) said "These people brought this on themselves. Now you're rewarding failure. A lot of these people should be fired, not awarded bonuses. This is horrible. It's outrageous." Senator Mitch McConnell (Republican, Kentucky) echoed his comments, saying "This is an outrage." Senator Jon Tester (Democrat, Montana) said "This is ridiculous." and AIG executives "need to understand that the only reason they even have a job is because of the taxpayers." Senator Dick Durbin (Democrat, Illinois) said "I've had it." and "The fact that they continue to do it while we pour in billions of dollars is undefensible." Representative Paul Hodes (Democrat, New Hampshire) said "I think AIG now stands for arrogance, incompetence and greed."
Representative Barney Frank (Democrat, Massachusetts), Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said paying these bonuses would be "rewarding incompetence" and "These people may have a right to their bonuses. They don't have a right to their jobs forever." Representative Mark Kirk (Republican, Illinois) said "AIG should not be on welfare from Uncle Sam, and yet paying bonuses and transferring a considerable amount of taxpayer funds to entities overseas." Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said "It makes me angry. I slammed the phone more than a few times on discussing AIG." Lawrence Summers, Director of the National Economic Council, said "The easy thing would be to just say, you know, ‘Off with their heads,’ and violate the contracts." Austan Goolsbee, of the Council of Economic Advisers said "I don't know why they would follow a policy that's really not sensible, is obviously going to ignite the ire of millions of people." and "You worry about that backlash."
Representative Barney Frank said "I do want to stress, this initial intervention into AIG was not part of the congressional rescue plan.", "Before we were even asked by the Bush administration to do the rescue plan, President Bush‘s two top economic appointees Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Paulson came to us and said--Mr. Bernanke, as head of the Federal Reserve is going to lend $85 billion to AIG under a statute that dates back to 1932. They didn‘t ask us. They didn‘t solicit our opinion. They simply informed us.", and "Since then, when we have voted, we have put tough conditions on. And, in fact, this won‘t be happening again. The conditions are so tough that there have been articles recently in the Washington Post and the New York Times from banks complaining that we‘ve made the conditions so tough they are going to give us our money back."
Representative Thaddeus McCotter (R-Michigan) said in a speech to Congress, "Every single Democrat in this House that voted for that bill voted to approve and protect those AIG bonuses." Senator Jim Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) said that much of the blame for the bonuses should be directed at the 74 Senators who voted for the bailout, "... including now President Obama, who voted in favor of handing over an unprecedented amount of money and power to an unelected bureaucrat last August."
Read more about this topic: AIG Bonus Payments Controversy
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