Dodd: Administration pushed for language protecting bonuses - CNN.com: "(CNN) -- Senate Banking committee Chairman Christopher Dodd told CNN Wednesday that he was responsible for language added to the federal stimulus bill to make sure that already-existing contracts for bonuses at companies receiving federal bailout money were honored.
Dodd acknowledged his role in the change after a Treasury Department official told CNN the administration pushed for the language.
Both Dodd and the official, who asked not to be named, said it was because administration officials were afraid the government would face numerous lawsuits without the new language.
Dodd, a Democrat, told CNN's Dana Bash and Wolf Blitzer that Obama administration officials pushed for the language to an amendment designed to limit bonuses and 'golden parachutes' at those companies.
'The administration had expressed reservations,' Dodd said. 'They asked for modifications. The alternative was losing the amendment entirely.'
On Tuesday, Dodd denied to CNN that he had anything to do with adding the language, which has been used by officials at bailed-out insurance giant AIG to justify paying millions of dollars in bonuses to executives"
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So now the truth is out. And what of the feigned indignation of all these Democrats in Congress, such as Barney Frank, who actually VOTED FOR THIS. And what of the feigned indignation of President Obama, whose Treasury Secretary ASKED FOR THIS to be put in the stimulus package?
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And what about the feigned indignation of Republicans, who -- at least if Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are any indication -- are all in favor of the bonuses. The only reason the Capital Hill Republicans are even questioning it is that they sense a chance to make a political point. But they actually like the bonuses.
Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are not elected officials, so what they say about this is beside the point. What matters is that Congress and the President allowed these bonuses to be paid, it has blown up in their faces, and now they are pretending to be shocked, shocked, to discover that gambling is going on here at Rick's Cafe Americain. This didn't just happen by accident. The White House, or at least the Treasury Secretary, seems to have put pressure on Congress to allow it.
Trouble with that line of argument is every time a Republican "strays" (i.e. disagrees with Rushbo), they have to backtrack and apologize. It has put the Republican Party in the extraordinary, and dare I say alarming position of marginalizing the most successful conservative policy enactor of recent times (Newt Gingrich) while paying homage to a bloated blowhard of a bully whose broader influence is on the wane and whose continued influence among Republicans elevates Bushist knee-jerk populism over actual conservative policy.
Yes--I agree that the party and their elected officials are in a difficult rhetorical position. They need the base voters Rush (and Hannity, Coulter, Mark Levin, etc.) can rally to the cause of conservatism. But the politicians want to compromise and be pragmatic, and the media conservatives won't let them. The price for Rush helping you (or even not denouncing you!) is strict adherence to the Rush party line.
I think the problem goes deeper than Rush, although he is the perfect person to exemplify it. It goes back to what Reagan did. He unified under the Republican party all the people who called themselves "conservatives," but in fact there were some major disagreements among them. The fissures were papered over at election time, because they all agreed that they loved Reagan. He seemed to truly believe in something, and he called it conservatism. But it was an artificial construct that was actually not a coherent ideology. In truth, it isn't hard to turn those fissures in the "conservative" base into fracture lines, if the candidate or president isn't able to sweep everybody under the big tent by force of image and personality (Bush 41, Dole, McCain--all dull, lacking any semblance of charisma).
For example, on domestic policy, the libertarian-inclined folks have huge disagreements with the morality warriors--on drugs, gays, science, marriage, the "culture of death" nonsense. On foreign policy, there are isolationists, as well as neocons who want to invade the world. And there are other splits as well.vSo, the Republican Party is dependent on its "conservative" base, but that base is in truth hard to unify.
And the larger problem is that right now, the conservative base has no leader in electoral politics. Bush is gone--he held them together using the rally-round-the-flag effect--and the national party is full of stuffed shirts and bumbling blowhards. Instead they look to Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, etc., in the media. They love their critique of liberalism and the media. But these media folks don't have to govern, so they never compromise. That's what attracts the base in droves--the uncompromising embrace of what is "right."
There are some smart people in the ranks of the party. But if the media conservatives DQ everybody who believes in evolution, or questions laissez-faire economics, or supports abortion rights under some limited circumstances, the Republicans won't get back in power unless and until the voters decide the Democrats have failed. Retrospective voting covers over a lot of problems with a challenger--exhibit A being Barack Obama.
That said, all these problems the Republicans have--bad as they are-- are still quite apart from the rank hypocrisy and outright lying of Dodd, et al., about this AIG bonus situation. I don't care what any Republican said about it. They voted against the stimulus package. This is the Democrats governing as they see fit, because they can, and then dissimulating about it.
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