We’re Being Played

It’s funny how congressional Democrats are now outraged against executives at AIG who got bonuses and donate to their campaigns. Bailout backlash is the hot new thing with the kids these days and now the Dems are back peddling to show the American public how much they care about how our tax dollars are spent. Its comical considering they came to that decision $3.6 trillion dollars ago.

Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) has received over $100k in campaign financing from AIG and leads the pack of any politician to receive money from AIG. Dodd had also placed an amendment to the stimulus bill that allowed businesses that were bailed out by the government to keep their bonuses if they were contracted before February of this year. The Fed knew before throwing money at AIG that these bonuses have been allocated in legally binding contracts.

If government had not intervened and let AIG go into bankruptcy, a bankruptcy court would have the legal authority to absolve those contracts. Not only would the taxpayer save millions on the bonuses, they would have saved BILLIONS by not bailing out AIG. In fact, AIG would have to restructure their business to become profitable again, including firing the same execs that ran it into the ground.

What really burns my ass is that two weeks ago, the Fed loaned AIG another $30 billion from TARP. Now all of a sudden they’re outraged at the bonuses? Where was the outrage against the earmarks in the Omnibus bill? Where was the outrage in the spending in the so called stimulus?

Oh wait, never fear everyone, Turbo Tax Timmy is on the case and our glorious President has full confidence. “Heckuva Job Timmy”.

It’s a smoke and mirrors game that’s being played by Washington. They are distracting us for bigger and possibly worse things to come so we won’t notice. I don’t think the AIG execs should get the bonuses either but when the Obama administration had the leverage before giving them another $30 billion, they never used it.

It’s not just Democrats either. Senator McCain is expressing his outrage in typical angry McCain fashion but he supported the original TARP bailout. Perhaps he should have thought of it before voting for it.

Rick Santelli is right. Forget about the bonuses and get mad at the bailouts. If AIG was never bailed out in the first place, idiots like Dodd and Chucky Schumer (D-NY) wouldn’t have an excuse to grandstand with their false outrage.