Boehner Proves He Was Right to Throw the Stimulus Bill on the House Floor

The House’s Republican leader should have flung it towards the nearest trash can.

Boehner asks some great questions:

Excerpts:

Mr. Speaker, my colleagues, I caught a little grief five weeks ago when we had the stimulus bill on the floor.  Remember the 1,100-page bill that no one had time to read and that no one did read?  Obviously the President didn’t have time to read it either because in that bill was this one sentence.  This one sentence that made it clear that someone knew that these AIG bonuses were about to be paid and they didn’t want them stopped.  So somehow in the dark of night this one sentence was added to the bill so that AIG would pay these bonuses to their executives.

“This language wasn’t in the House bill.  This language wasn’t in the Senate bill.  This language showed up in the dead of night and no one got to see it.  I’m wondering where did the language come from?  Who wrote it?  Who asked the conferees to put it in the bill?  What conferees on the part of the House agreed to this?  I’m looking for somebody to put their hand up.

“That’s the whole issue.  This political circus that’s going on here today with this bill is not getting to the bottom of the questions of who knew what and when did they know it.  Somebody was responsible to draw up this language.  Someone brought it to the conferees.  Someone brought it to the Democrat Leadership who wrote this bill in secret and put this language in there.  But we have no idea who it was.

That said, I totally disagree with the Boehner’s proposal to take 100% of the bonuses back, for three reasons:

• One, a deal is a deal, and to the extent these bonuses were supported by contracts, changing them after the fact will introduce even more uncertainty into the economy about how solid any and all contracts are. That said, if the contractual language is as clear as I understand it is, bonuses should be retrieved from those AIG execs who contractually promised to stay and then, once the direct deposits were made, took the money and ran. Though obviously larger amounts are involved, this is is no different than forcing an employee inadvertently overpaid by a company’s payroll system to give back the amount mistakenly paid. My understanding is that an employee who tries to hang on to the money in this kind of situation can be criminally prosecuted for theft if they balk at repaying. Again, if the contractual language is ironclad, the AIG execs who took the money and ran also committed theft — very grand theft.
• Second, retroactive targeted taxation of legally completed transactions under laws that existed at the time of those transactions is, or certainly should be, illegal.
• Finally, as a political move, letting the bonuses stand — which I believe is the only legally defensible option anyway — would create ammunition opponents can use against any and all congressmen and senators who supported the stimulus monstrosity. Those who voted for the bill agreed to allow the AIG bonuses to be paid because they didn’t read the bill. This happened because they didn’t insist on having the time to read the bill. Plainly stated, they didn’t do the job they were elected to do, and they richly deserve to be stuck with the political consequences of that dereliction of duty. It is all on them. They shouldn’t be given cover, as Boehner is doing, by agreeing with the idea that pulling back any of the legally paid and keepable bonuses is okay. It isn’t.

I’d be willing to write off less than 0.02% of the stimulus package in return for having an easily understood Exhibit A demonstrating how utterly negligent the current congressional majority and administration are, and continue to be.