AIG Bonuses Spark D.C. Whodunit Search

O.K. American suckers, errr, that is taxpayers, now we learn that a bill in Congress that would have limited the $165 million in bonuses paid out by AIG passed muster on the floor of the senate but was killed in committee and never saw the light of day.

Now there is a search in Washington, D.C. for whodunit. The provision wasn’t stripped from the bill by a lowly senate assistant clerk.

“It is the ultimate indictment of what Washington has become,” Sen. Ron Wyden, co-sponsor of the eliminated provision, said. “It’s a place where, again and again, the public interest is deep-sixed behind closed doors and without any fingerprints.”

According to Wyden, he “spent hours on the Senate floor,” working to get the bipartisan amendment passed. He succeeded — not a single Senator voted against the provision. “But,” says Wyden, “it died in conference.”

So who killed the bill? Wyden says that he doesn’t know.

So much for the new transparency in government. One of only 100 members of the powerful US Senate says he was kept in the dark about the progress of his bill in committee. What a country the US has become. We have a capital full of self serving “public servants” who are owned by special interest groups and won’t even let bills of merit come to a vote.

I think that President Obama is well intentioned and really hopes to bring change to Washington. However, the administration’s handling of the AIG affair is making the Obama government look weak and ineffective. President Obama started his term with an abundance of political capital. However, unless he shows some strong leadership soon that capital will be depleted by the end oh his first one hundred days.

Of course, a major problem in hammering the management of AIG over the bonuses is that AIG is 80% owned by the US government. So it is the government operating in a way that benefits Wall Street and undeserving companies like AIG that is at fault for not exercising proper leadership and demanding transparent procedures and oversight.

The Long Crisis is sure to continue as long as companies like AIG are considered “too big to fail”. The President will have to call their bluff sooner or later anyhow. He should make it clear that with this bonus measure AIG is on it own. It should be sink or straighten up and swim time at AIG. Obama must prove that he can be an effective leader or his Presidency will become ineffective at a time like no other when the US needs strong, forceful leadership.

A good place to start showing some transparency would be to solve the whodunit mystery.