The Democrats have been whipping the country up in an frenzy over the AIG retention bonuses paid out last Friday. They claimed that they "didn't know" of them until recently.
Ed Morrissey at HotAir.com dug up video from C-Span showing evidence to the contrary. Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-NY) specifically mentions the upcoming payouts of over $162 million in bonuses to AIG execs and blames the Bush Administration for a lack of oversight on March 3.
In the C-Span March 3 video, Rep. Crowley said this:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome to the committee, Mr. Geithner, and thank you for your responses so far. It never ceases to amaze me the level of apparent amnesia some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have had about how we got to this problem in the first place, and I thank you for answering Mr. Heller’s question in particular. By the line of questioning, you’re almost led to believe that because of a last month and a few days of a presidency we had the problem we have today, and thank you for setting the record straight. This didn’t happen overnight. This took eight years in the making of stagnant, at best, growth.
But yesterday, Mr. Secretary, the Treasury and the Federal Reserve announced a new fourth plan to rescue troubled financial services giant AIG. I do agree that AIG’s sustainability is the lynchpin for some of our recovery efforts, and it’s important for the federal government to work to keep it afloat. However, I must demand that AIG increase the accountability and transparency, something that was not done during the previous administration.
For example, just last month, AIG paid 343 employees of AIG FP — their Financial Products division that created the financial hole that AIG is in, and in turn a multibillion-dollar bill for American taxpayers — $56 million in bonuses and are slated to pay an additional $162 million in bonuses to 393 participants in the coming weeks. And there’s more. Further bonus payments totaling approximately 230 million (dollars) are due to 407 participants at AIG’s Financial Products division in March 2010. This makes no sense to my constituency.
To see the full article and video, go here.
What a bunch of liars! It is obvious that the Democrats had to know of these bonuses before March 3 for Crowley to utter his statement in the first place!
1 comment:
Of course they knew all along. I ask myself why they are playing such a game: they must have knew that most of the population will be strictly against such bonuses to be paid out. Why on earth wait so long before speaking against it? They knew months ago. What a comedy..
Take care,
Jay
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