A media surprise

Even CBS news is starting to hit the bandwith of the outright liberal deception and lies on the AIG bonus faux outrage.....

It was a day of outrage on Capitol Hill. Outrage that AIG, recipient of almost $180 billion in federal bailout money, is paying out $165 million in "retention awards" to hundreds of employees, including 73 bonuses of $1 million or more and 11 payments to people who no longer work for AIG.

As CBS News and others have documented, that outrage is disingenuous coming from lawmakers who have known about the pending bonuses for months.

In particular, it's disingenuous coming from anyone who voted for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (a.k.a. the Obama stimulus package). The stimulus bill included provisions to limit executive compensation at companies receiving federal bailout money. But it also stated explicitly that the limits would not apply to bonuses agreed to prior to Feb. 11, 2009.

For several days, news organizations have been trying to determine who put that clause in the bill. The Treasury Department, reeling from the bad PR associated with propping up AIG while letting the bonuses go forward, pointed its finger at Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.

The administration official said the Treasury Department did its own legal analysis and concluded that those contracts could not be broken. The official noted that even a provision recently pushed through Congress by Senator Christopher J. Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, had an exemption for such bonus agreements already in place.

The Treasury's linking Dodd to the provision allowing the bonuses is true, but, again, disingenuous and misleading.

Dodd put the amendment in the stimulus bill limiting executive compensation with no grandfather clause. Under pressure from the Obama administration and the Treasury Department (the same Treasury Department pointing its finger at Dodd), he was forced to add the grandfather clause or abandon his amendment altogether.

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