We are slowly approaching a point in time when former President George W. Bush cannot be blamed anymore for the turbulence taking place in our Nation’s Capitol these days. For the first two months into his Presidency, Barack Obama took every opportunity to tell the world that he had inherited from the previous administration the biggest mess (deficit, debt, economy etc) since the ‘Great Depression’ in 1933 and was just working very hard to correct course and straighten out the terrible situation and turn the economy around. That’s why he needed very quickly a nearly 800 billion dollar stimulus bill passed by Congress which he signed into law upon passage and why he signed a pork-laden omnibus bill of $410 billion for the current fiscal year which ends on September 30.
But the latest ‘scandal’ in Washington D.C. which has enraged most Americans involves a company called AIG (American International Group) that paid retention bonuses to employees/executives to the tune of 210 million dollars out of a total of over 170 billion dollars of bail-out funds paid to AIG. From President Obama to the Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner and most members of Congress, they are collectively angry and outraged and use every opportunity to express their emotions over this: How dare AIG make bonus payments to some of their employees who worked in those divisions who lost these vast sums of monies? The American public is equally outraged and there already have been death threats made to AIG employees. In spite of this, Congressman Barney Frank, a Democrat from Massachusetts has asked the Chairman/CEO of AIG, Mr. Edward Liddy for the names of those employees who have received these bonuses for whatever devious reasons. Is he attempting to call these individuals before his Committee to publicly shame them into returning the bonuses?
But now let us take a look behind the curtain and find the truth in all this: These so called retention bonuses paid to some AIG employees were anchored in contracts signed over a year ago (between AIG and employees), they were not performance bonuses; meaning that they did not receive these monies for outstanding performances. These contracts (signed last year) specifically stated that payments had to be made by March 15, 2009. And now comes the clincher: These bonuses were specifically mentioned in the Obama stimulus bill and directed to be paid if these retention bonus contracts were dated prior to February 12, 2009. This bill was hurriedly approved by Congress and signed by the President shortly thereafter which leads us to this question: With this kind of money involved – nearly 800 billion dollars – should they not have taken the time and read the bill before voting for it (Congress) and signing it (President Obama)? We absolutely, positively think so and find it outrageous that they did not do their jobs!
But here is where it gets almost comical: Nobody in Congress or in the Obama Administration saw it or knew about it. This is what we find impossible to believe and we can only come up with one explanation:
It is total incompetence, plain and simple! It is chaos and what we see now in Washington D.C. is called CYA (Cover Your A..) They are now all running around and claim not having had any knowledge of this outrage before and as details surface, we find out that they collectively are not telling the truth. Imagine the hypocrisy: Someone in Congress puts a specific provision into the stimulus bill to pay these bonuses, the majority of the members vote for it, the President signed the bill and now they are all outraged. What a bunch of hypocrites! There are definitely signs of growing incompetence in the executive and legislative branches of the Federal government from top to bottom.
We here at CSU do not want to take pleasure in this but we think there are many millions of American voters who did not vote for Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress who feel good about their votes. They did not see what they wanted to see in those candidates, had doubts and did not buy the campaign hyperbole about Change and Hope.