Dems step back from bonus anger

It’s funny but early last week, those folks at AIG who took $165 million in bonuses were the most evil people on earth according to Democrats. Angry Democrats demanded a 90% tax on those ill-gotten gains – well, until it was discovered that Democrat Senators and the Democrat Administration had facilitated the bonus payments. Now, they’re in less of a hurry to recover the tax payer money, according to the Washington Times;

Rank-and-file Senate Democrats on Monday helped put the brakes on their own congressional leaders’ frenzied dash to enact new taxes to take back executive bonuses at bailed-out Wall Street firms.

Democratic defectors echoed President Obama’s and business leaders’ concerns about the tax bill’s legality and chilling effect on struggling financial firms. Critics said the tax penalty could scare banks from participating in the Treasury plan announced Monday to buy toxic assets in order to unfreeze credit markets.

Of course, that doesn’t stop Harry Reid from blaming Republicans;

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, blamed Republicans for stalling action. “With Republican cooperation, we can quickly and responsibly return these funds to the American people,” he said Monday on the chamber floor.

The Washington Post reports that it wasn’t Republicans, exclusively who blocked the legislation, though, well, if you want to call Olympia Snowe a Republican;

…Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine), a co-sponsor of the legislation, urged her colleagues to push forward with it. “It would be a huge mistake for Congress to retreat,” she said.

But, the Senate Republicans did keep a cooler head about them;

“My view is that this bill ought to slow down and we ought to think about the ramifications of what we’re doing,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) told reporters.

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) said the bonus tax could sabotage the administration’s plan, which Geithner announced yesterday, to court private-sector investors to buy up the toxic bank assets that have paralyzed the economy.

The Democrats had their chance to prevent these bonuses from being paid when they wrote the legislation to distribute the money in the first place, but they let their own politics and Chris Dodd’s fund raising get in the way. Yes, it’s a terrible thing that our tax money went to reward failure, but it’ll be a more terrible thing to allow Congress to get their collective nose under the tent of compensation.

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Liberals suck