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Lying Bastards

I’m sorry, but I can’t come up with any other word than this. By now you’ve all heard the story that it was Senator Chris Dodd who is responsible for AIG, et al, getting their bonuses. Well, it’s a lie. And the lie comes straight from the White House.

Greenwald:

That is simply not what happened.  What actually happened is the opposite.  It was Dodd who did everything possible — including writing and advocating for an amendment — which would have applied the limitations on executive compensation to all bailout-receiving firms, including AIG, and applied it to all future bonus payments without regard to when those payments were promised.  But it was Tim Geithner and  Larry Summers who openly criticized Dodd’s proposal at the time and insisted that those limitations should apply only to future compensation contracts, not ones that already existed.  The exemption for already existing compensation agreements — the exact provision that is now protecting the AIG bonus payments — was inserted at the White House’s insistence and over Dodd’s objections.  But now that a political scandal has erupted over these payments, the White House is trying to deflect blame from itself and heap it all on Chris Dodd by claiming that it was Dodd who was responsible for that exemption.

Jane’s post documents this sequence of events without any possibility for doubt.  The debate that took place over limits on executive compensation for bailout-receiving companies only occurred six weeks ago, and it is all documented in the public press.  Dodd was the one fighting against the White House in order to apply the prohibition to all bonus payments, i.e., to make the compensation limits retroactive as well as prospective.  As but one crystal-clear example that proves this, here is a February 14 article from the Wall St. Journal on the debate over executive compensation limits:

The most stringent pay restriction bars any company receiving funds from paying top earners bonuses equal to more than one-third of their total annual compensation.  That could severely crimp pay packages at big banks, where top officials commonly get relatively modest salaries but often huge bonuses.

As word spread Friday about the new and retroactive limit — inserted by Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut — so did consternation on Wall Street and in the Obama administration, which opposed it.

Can that be any clearer?  It was Obama officials, not Dodd, who demanded that already-vested bonus payments be exempted.  And it was Dodd, not Obama officials, who wanted the prohibition applied to all compensation agreements, past and future.  The provision which shielded already-promised bonus payments from the executive compensation limits ended up being inserted at the insistence of Geithner.

It really shouldn’t surprise me. Throwing supporters, family members, and key constituents under the bus in order to maintain the Obama Glow was standard operating procedure during the campaign. Why stop now?

How does it feel under the bus Chris? I wonder if you’re rethinking your endorsement now?

8 thoughts on “Lying Bastards”

  2. Five years ago Hillary Clinton put money and prestige behind Obama for his Senate run. Obama not only ran against her for the presidential nomination, but ran a dirty campaign where he personally slimed her and her husband, a former president.

    Yet people like Dean, Richardson and Dodd chose to hitch their wagons to his star. Did they really expect that he’d treat them honorably? Suckers.

    I’d say I’m glad Hamscher’s waking up, but info on Obama’s advisors, his veneration of Reagan and the like were in the open for everyone to see during the campaign. She deliberately stuck her head up her @ss when this kind of stuff should have been pointed out.

  5. So, Dodd is falling on his sword? Why? Have they got pictures of him or something? Either way, this was done due to pressure from the administration, not because it was Dodd’s idea.

  6. Update from Greenwald regarding Dodd’s CNN remarks:

    I explicitly wrote that it was Dodd who, after arguing vehemently against this provision, ultimately agreed to its inclusion. And the statement from Dodd’s office that I quoted above included the same series of events (“Because of negotiations with the Treasury Department and the bill Conferees, several modifications were made, including adding the exemption”). That’s exactly what Dodd said today on CNN.

    The point was — and is — that Dodd was pressured to put that carve-out in at the insistence of Treasury officials (whose opposition meant that Dodd’s choices were the limited compensation restriction favored by Geithner/Summers or no limits at all), and Dodd did so only after arguing in public against it. To blame Dodd for provisions that the White House demanded is dishonest in the extreme, and what Dodd said today on CNN about the White House’s advocacy of this provision confirms, not contradicts, what I wrote.

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