Democrats at a loss without their Whipping Boy
The White House and Democrats in both houses of Congress are doing some serious back-peddling in recent days as the public learns that AIG, one of the biggest recipients of the government largesse (bail outs) has doled out over $165 million in executive bonuses. Some of them were paid as retention bonuses to executives that don’t even work for the company anymore! An outrage to the average American taxpayer to be sure, however, the outrage should not be directed to AIG – it should be directed to the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats. AIG was simply honoring its contracts, as it was obligated to do, otherwise it would have been compelled to defend numerous lawsuits which would have cost the company much more than the $165 million paid in bonuses.
The problem is that the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats failed to provide oversight of the taxpayer funds given to AIG. Indeed, the latest largesse of $30 billion was doled out a mere two weeks ago under the “leadership” of Obama and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. At the time, the feds surely could have put in place a condition that the largesse would be granted provided no bonuses were paid – but they simply did not do so. This displays either a mind boggling degree of incompetence in and by the administration, or a more pernicious plot to send government kickbacks to the AIG execs that gave so much money to the election campaigns of many Washington insiders (Obama being one of them). In either case, it doesn’t sit well with the American people.
And now the Democrats are scrambling.
Gone are the days when they could pull out their favorite whipping boy and blame the problem on George W. Bush and his administration. Now that the Democrats control the White House and Congress, they are tripping over themselves to figure out whom to blame (other than themselves, of course). Unfortunately for them, the public is becoming keenly aware of whose watch this stupefying waste of taxpayer dollars is occurring on. Whether the Republicans will capitalize on the events of late in the mid-term elections remains to be seen. With many of their own members also on the campaign “take” from AIG, including McCain, one would doubt it will be anything but business as usual in Washington D.C. for the next four to eight years. And this after hearing nothing but “hope” and “change” throughout the course of the presidential campaign.
Something is truly rotten in Washington these days, and neither the Democrats or the Republicans seem too keen on doing anything about it.
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Democrats at a loss without their Whipping Boy
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