Dodd Throws Himself Under The Bus About The AIG Bonuses He Wrote Into Law

So…what now? Congress and the president are talking about having those executives who, under this law written by Democrats and lobbyists, passed by House Democrats without one single Republican vote, passed by the Senate with only Benedict ArnoldArlen Specter, Benedict ArnoldSusan Collins, and Benedict ArnoldOlympia Snowe favoring it from the GOP side, and signed by President Obama with great ballyhoo and fanfare, received “retention payments” fork that money back over to…well, the government, I suppose.
You know what’s funny? All those Democrats voted for this bill and the president signed it into law, and only now are they finding out they voted to preserve an act they are now trying so hard to appear outraged by. Barack “I Won” Obama even called the passage of this Porkulus an “emergency” that couldn’t wait for “a moment” before disappearing to Chicago for a long weekend between Congress’ passage of the bill and his signing of it.
Whatever he was doing on that vacay, we can be sure he wasn’t reading his own emergency legislation, as he’s a shocked as everybody else who helped ram it through the system to see what was actually in there.
This episode should teach one of two valuable lessons (besides the fact that Congress simply doesn’t read what they pass, and President Obama has no idea what’s in legislation he calls “critical” and signs into law). Those lessons, as an extremely analytical fellow RedStater said in a recent email, are:
(a) A firm can take taxpayer-funded bailouts and keep on conducting business as usual, knowing there are no repercussions and there will always be more cash there for the taking; or
(b) “Public-private partnership” deals with the government, like the TARP and Porkulus, operate on something very closely approximating “Vader-in-Cloud-City rules.”
If it’s the latter that’s learned by American businesses like AIG, which is seeing rules written and signed into American law being changed by the Democratic overlords simply because, then I think we may see a whole lot fewer businesses come calling at the next Taxpayer-Funded Welfare Handout and Jugband Revival party.
Personally, I prefer that to be the long-term lesson learned from this.