|
Conservative Compass Blog
|
|
Written by Bob Sordahl
|
|
Wednesday, 25 March 2009 |
In my post "AIG Bonuses Must Stand", I named Chris Dodd as the person largely responsible for the ability of AIG to grant large bonuses in spite of the fact that they were the recipient of Government money. I stand corrected. New information indicates that Dodd had tried to stop the bonuses, but was forced to alter his amendment under pressure from the Obama administration. Factcheck.org explained it this way:
As we explained last week, an amendment introduced by Sen. Chris Dodd and passed by voice vote in the Senate called for any institution that still needed to pay back money issued under the Troubled Assets Relief Program to be prohibited from paying "any bonus, retention award, or incentive compensation" to at least the top 25 employees on the payroll. That became part of the Senate version of the massive stimulus bill. But in February, the administration expressed concern that banks would be reluctant to accept help under those rules, and Dodd's amendment was watered down substantially by Democratic lawmakers who drafted a Senate-House compromise version of the stimulus package. Last week, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said that his department thought the Dodd prohibition wouldn’t withstand legal challenges. Dodd has said he reluctantly went along with a weaker ban as part of the final legislation, which instead stipulated that bonuses could be issued if they were part of contracts signed before Feb. 11. So, is the administration outraged by the bonuses, or by the fact that they were found out?
|
