More on the AIG Bonuses

According to this AP report, the House of Representatives is set to vote today on a bill to tax away 90% of the bonuses awarded by AIG.

It was also reported yesterday, that the language of the stimulus bill that explicitly allowed these bonuses was inserted by Senator Chris Dodd. Dodd claimed, however, that the language was inserted at the insistence of officials in the Obama administration. The Obama camp, of course, denies this is the case.

So hit rewind for just a minute and think back to a month ago when the stimulus package passed. Recall that even the leadership of congress that was pushing this bill so heavily had not had a chance to read the whole thing before the vote. Is it any wonder that we end up with all sorts of unintentional consequences given how little vetting to which the package was submitted? I suspect that the AIG bonuses are only a small fraction of the problems that have been, are, and will be generated by that poorly thought-out piece of legislation.

I love this quote from the Bloomberg report:

Other Democrats who voted for the stimulus bill have ramped up criticism of AIG’s bonuses, including Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, who told reporters, “I think the time has come to exercise our ownership rights.”

Why bother with the fiction of owernship rights? The congress can confiscate what it wants from whoever it wants by simply passing a well-targeted piece of legislation. The only difference between doing it this way and the way that Saddam Hussein would've done something similar is the political theater associated with a formal vote in an elected assembly.

I bothers me a great deal that whenever politicans are caught doing something immoral one of the pat defenses they roll out is that their actions were not illegal. Here we have a case where it is politically convenient to ignore the law and act in defense of higher morals. But, isn't such selective morality also immoral?