As I wrote on Tuesday,
it was clearly Treasury officials (led by Tim Geithner) who were the
driving force behind the dilution of Chris Dodd's efforts to impose
strict limitations on the executive compensation received by bailed-out
companies. That fact leads former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen, writing at National Reveiw, to demand that Republicans blame
the AIG bonus payments on Obama because he signed the stimulus bail
containing the carve-out for pre-February, 2009 employment agreements:
President Obama rammed through the stimulus bill - over Republican objections - that explicitly protected the AIG bonuses. . . .
Either
Obama did not know the provision was in there, which validates the
Republican point that no one read this bill. Or he did, and signed it
anyway. Either way, it's a disaster of his making.
We should lay responsibility for the AIG bailout where it belongs - directly at the President's feet.
That's
a nice illustration of the oozing, limitless deceit that characterizes
the people who governed the country for the last eight years. It's
certainly true that the Obama administration advocated less rigid
compensation limits than Dodd wanted. But most leading Congressional
Republicans -- the ones Theissen is urging blame Obama for the
AIG bonus paments -- opposed all forms of executive compensation limits.
During the debate over those limits in early February, The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim wrote an article headlined "GOP Opposes Pay Limits On Bailed-Out Bankers" and compiled some of the statements from key GOP leaders:
President Obama has proposed capping compensation for executives at banks that take taxpayer bailout money at $500,000. Republicans hate the idea
-- a position puts them uncomfortably on the side of people currently
about as popular as child-porn producers and subprime mortgage brokers.
Senate
Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ) blamed the "tone deaf" bankers for
creating the political environment that allows Obama to call for a cap.
"Because of their excesses, very
bad things begin to happen, like the United States government telling a
company what it can pay its employees. That's not a good thing in
America," Kyl told the Huffington Post.
"What executives have done is troubling, but it's equally troubling to have government telling shareholders how much they can pay the executives," said Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL).
Sen.
James Inhofe (R-OK) said that he is "one of the chief defenders of
Obama on the Republican side" for the president's efforts to reach
across the aisle. But, said Inhofe, "as I was listening to him make
those statements I thought, is this still America? Do we really tell people how to run [a business], and who to pay and how much to pay?" . . . .
The
objection to the government intervention in salaries is rooted in the
Republican belief that government is inherently ineffective. "If
Congress can run a financial institution, it belies everything I've
seen in this body. Government does not do a good job running private
institutions," said Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO).
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) agreed: "If we do such a good job of running the federal government, what business do we have telling them how to run the banks?"
The GOP is also concerned that setting compensation limits could put the country on the road to serfdom.
"This is just a symptom of what happens when the government intervenes
and we start controlling all aspects of the economy. This is just the
first piece," said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). "If you accept the fact that
the government should be setting pay scales in America, then it's hard
not to go after these exorbitant salaries. But I think it's a sad day
in America when the government starts setting pay, no matter how
outlandish they are."
That's the Republican
Party: vehemently advocate positions that result in great harm, and
then, once political controversy erupts once the destruction becomes
transparent, shamelessly pretend to have opposed the policies in the
first place. In fact, as Think Progress documents,
many of the very same Republicans who emphatically imposed any
executive compensation limits are now leading the way in protesting
the AIG bonus payments. In fairness, some GOP leaders, such as House
Minority Leader John Boehner, supported Obama's plan for limiting compensation, but most vehemently opposed it, and even now, the key right-wing leaders -- Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck -- are all explicitly defending the AIG bonuses.
The
controversy of the AIG bonsues -- which, strictly as a quantitative
matter, is rather trival in the scheme of things -- illustrates how
warped our political discourse is. Here is the hierarchy of positions
regarding executive compensation limits back in February:
- Chris Dodd -- advocated full-scale, no-exceptions limits on executive compensation for bailed-out companies
- Obama administration -- supported limits but advocated exceptions for already-existing employment contracts
- GOP leaders -- opposed all executive compensation limits as Socialist tyranny
Yet
everything is exactly backwards in this controversy. The Obama
administration has been trying to blame Dodd for the carve-out that
allowed the AIG bonus payments, a carve-out that came into being
because Geithner/Summers demanded it and becuase they opposed the
limits Dodd wanted as too onerous. Yet now, the GOP -- which opposed limits of any kind
-- wants to blame the Obama administration and Dodd because the limits
weren't stringent enough to stop the AIG bonus payments. And the
media is playing along perfectly, having clearly decided that the person who led the way in fighting for absolute limits -- Dodd -- is the real villain responsible for the AIG bonsues.