Obama and I agree on something:Obama Confirms HR 1586, The AIG Bonus Tax Bill, Is Unconstitutional
The president ordered Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to use every legal means to recover the bonus money from AIG. If it is not repaid, it will be deducted from the company’s next bailout payment. The House decided to extract its own revenge by passing a bill that would impose a tax of up to 90 percent on the AIG bonuses and on the bonuses of anyone making more than $250,000 a year who works for a financial institution receiving more than $5 billion in bailout funds.
“I mean you’re a constitutional law professor,” Kroft remarked. “You think this bill’s constitutional?”
“Well, I think that as a general proposition, you don’t wanna be passing laws that are just targeting a handful of individuals. You wanna pass laws that have some broad applicability. And as a general proposition, I think you certainly don’t wanna use the tax code to punish people,” the president replied. “I think that you’ve got an pretty egregious situation here that people are understandably upset about. And so let’s see if there are ways of doing this that are both legal, that are constitutional, that upholds our basic principles of fairness, but don’t hamper us from getting the banking system back on track.”
“You’ve got a piece of legislation that could affect tens of thousands of people. Some of these people probably had nothing to do with the financial crisis. And some of them probably deserve the bonuses that they got,” Kroft said. “I mean is that fair?”
Keep reading here
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
Screw finding a constituional way to get your own money back. Did they steal it and lie about what they were doing wiht it with any thought of the constitution? They are liars and theives and they’re using your money to buy up the only banks left that prevent them collpasing the entire system, which is their aim.
I agree that we should be trying to get these bonuses back, but there has to be a CONSTITUTIONAL way to do it.