Senate Quietly Stripped Measure Restricting Bonuses From Bailout Legislation

[Purveyor]

A new revelation in the scandal surrounding AIG's decision to pay multi-million dollar bonuses to executives -- a provision that would have restricted companies receiving federal government bailout aid from paying bonuses was quietly stripped from a bill last month.

The measure, introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), was removed by negotiators in a late-night, close door meeting. In the negotiations, senators agreed to limit executive compensation but decided to forgo barring excessive bonuses -- in fact, they specifically exempted it.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) (above right) dodged a question about the decision when asked by a reporter.

"I'm wondering sir, if that was a mistake by Democrats to drop that and you wish you hadn't at this time?" the reporter asked.

"I think we should look at what we did put in the bill," Reid replied. "We did put the Dodd language."

In an interview with The Huffington Post, Sen. Wyden bemoaned the removal of his bonus-limiting provision.

Senator Ron Wyden said on Tuesday that the furor surrounding AIG's bonus payments could have been avoided had the Obama White House and members of Congress simply backed legislation that he and Sen. Olympia Snowe introduced more than a month ago.

MORE...

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Senate_quietly_stripped_measure_restricting_bonuses_0318.html

[Clear Blue Sky]

1. Might help too if they read the bill they signed.

[panAmerican]

3. But this is the way they govern...

they pretend the sky is falling, and that there is no time for reasoned review of the facts. Then later on they can say, oh yeah we'll fix it.

I'm tired of this BS from both parties. And Obama is too timid in dealing with this.

[Clear Blue Sky]

4. Agree...

Obama voted for the original TARP bill as a senator, as did everyone else who is now "outraged". If they took some time with all of this, they wouldn't be creating messes that then have to be cleaned up.

[acmavm]

2. Oh well...

<snip>

The measure, introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR...

<snip>

Someone please tell me what wonderful victories we dems have won again? How were all these victories cleaning up Washington?

Turn over every shitpile and one or more of ours are right there composting comfortably while the rest of us just rot.

[specimenfred1984]

5. It's called fascism and they're called criminals

"They" being everyone who breaks the law and/or rewrites the laws after conspiring to make the laws exactly the opposite of what the laws intent is/was.