So When Do They Start Calling for Chris Dodd’s Head?
Senate Banking committee Chairman Christopher Dodd told CNN’s Dana Bash and Wolf Blitzer Wednesday that he was responsible for adding the bonus loophole into the stimulus package that permitted AIG and other companies that received bailout funds to pay bonuses.
Here’s the video of Dodd tap-dancing his way toward the truth.
Yesterday, Dodd’s story was quite different. Back in the heady salad days of Tuesday, Chris Dodd was blaming his amendment on the Treasury Department, people in the conference committee, or the Amendment Gnomes who like to play tricks on angelic Senators.
Dodd, in a Cable News Network interview on Tuesday, specifically denied inserting that 11th hour exemption.
“When I wrote the language there was no such language like that,” he said.
The New York Times, meanwhile, reported that Dodd said the exemption had been inserted at the insistence of the Treasury Department during the final negotiations over the stimulus.
A spokeswoman for Dodd, Kate Szostak, amplified those remarks today, saying first that Dodd’s “original executive compensation amendment adopted by the Senate did not include an exemption for existing contracts that provided for these types of bonuses.
“Because of negotiations with the Treasury Department and the bill conferees, several modifications were made, including adding the exemption, to ensure that some bonus restrictions would be included in the final stimulus bill,” she said. “Though not a conferee, Senator Dodd insisted that the final version include a provision to require the Treasury Department to review past bonuses.”
I suspect we’ll hear the word “misspoke” a time or six in the next couple days from folks looking to provide the Senator an easy out, including Dodd himself. Don’t let them get away with it. Chris Dodd lied. He knew that he was responsible for that loophole and he blamed it on someone else. He blamed the bonuses on corruption and greed and goodness knows what else even though he knew he was responsible for allowing those bonuses to even happen.
Chris Dodd knew the truth and he flat-out lied to the whole country to save his bacon.
If Dodd wasn’t on the hook already for his sweetheart deals with Countrywide Mortgage (the private company that made more subprime mortgages than any other in the country), he’d better be on it now.
Perhaps some of the members of Congress who were wishing violence on the law-abiding people who got the bonuses they were due will wish some of that on Dodd now. Let him feel what it’s like to live with death threats. Perhaps that puffed-up peacock Stephen Lynch will direct some of his contempt on a man who actually had real influence on whether those bonuses went out or not.
I don’t expect either will happen, but they sure as hell should. Dodd deserves every bit of scorn I or anyone else can heap on him. He has behaved contemptibly and helped drag a man who gave up a very comfortable retirement to help his country when it needed him through the mud.
Other Posts of Interest:
- Make Dodd Testify
- It’s Like the Mafia, Except It’s Chris Dodd and Chuck Schumer, Who Are Wimps
- Chris Dodd’s Sanctimony Show
Category: Our New Democratic Overlords, The Economy and Your Money
It is absolutely insane for one company to have such a position in our National Economy, there needs to be a dismantling of this company and others similar to it. As quoted from an AIG expert “We are the ones who stand to lose the most now” (speaking of the fact that the government owns 80% of the company) …… the more we put in, the more we stand to lose (lets cut our losses at 170B). We need to stop now, furthermore we should have never put in the 170B. I think the taxpayer (We the people) should have had more of a voice in first place of putting in of the 170B, not to mention the fact that 170B is not going to reestablish the company but it is being used to pay bonuses. AIG CAN NOT BE TRUSTED!!!!!!
Furthermore, I think that this whole financial thing is nothing more than a time bomb scheduled by our former anti-American President George W. Bush to keep the focus and media off all of his illegal activities. I use the phrase “Anti-American President” simply because we have never had such a President to cause our Nation so much turmoil than G. W. Bush, he disfigured us as a Nation in the eyes of the world.
Yes, and goodness knows that since January 20th, we haven't cheesed off any of our allies, right?
The truth is that the current administration is every bit as culpable for the money that's been sunk into AIG. I agree that we should never have bailed it out. We should have let an orderly bankruptcy take place, with the Treasury Department standing by to help companies entangled with AIG to have a relatively soft landing. We could not prevent damage to other companies but we certainly could keep the entire thing from falling down around our ears. Unfortunately, both administrations (past and present) chose to panic and it is the panic that's done more damage than AIG could ever have done.
However, the bonuses were unavoidable. They were legal payments required by contracts. We do not have the right to declare those contracts void simply because we find them distasteful. If AIG has been allowed to go bankrupt, those contracts would have been revisited. But we didn't and now we're stuck with them.
"Its an attempt to "put it behind him". If he admits past guilt, its history and therefore irrelevant. To the left, the past is past. What counts is "moving forward". It will not be noticed by the left that they will continue doing what they have been doing all along – screwing the American Taxpayer from now to eternity. That's simply what they do.
A. Rational Human | Email | Homepage | 03.18.09 – 9:00 pm | # "
Copied and pasted comment from Dr.Sanity's blog. I never thought of it that way, but I think he's correct. Being a Dem is never having to say "I'm sorry".
The other option is that the whole AIG falderol is deliberate – a device to direct anger toward a private company – or the class of high earners there – and deflect it away from the bailout as a whole and Congress for doing the bailout. I don't think _that_ is working for Congress, although it _has_ distracted attention away from the big money items. Waste anger on the small stuff, forget the big stuff seems to be the aim.
And Milton is an idiot.
BAILOUT RAGE!!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH CHRIS DODD AIG DODD AIG GEITHNER THEREFORE OBAMA AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! BAILOUT RAGE!!!!!!!!!