Today in Washington D. C. - March 19, 2009

Yesterday, the Senate voted 92-5 to confirm Ron Kirk as U.S. Trade Representative. The Senate also voted down three amendments to the lands bill by Sen. Coburn. What did we expect from the Democrats. Around 11 AM, the Senate will vote on three more amendments by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and after those votes, senators will vote on final passage of the H.R. 146, a vehicle for a public lands bill (S.22) that originally passed the Senate in January and if passed will be sent to the House for a vote without any opportunity for Republican Representatives to offer amendments.

The Senate at 2 pm is expected to proceed to a six hours of debate on the nomination of Elena Kagan to be Solicitor General, after which there will be a vote on her nomination. Kagan and other law school officials sued to overturn the Solomon amendment, adopted by Congress to ensure that law schools could not use homosexual rights rules to deny U.S. Armed Forces recruiters access to law school campuses. In other words, Kagan wants the military barred from on-campus recruiting because the military supposedly discriminates against homosexuals. The position was so extreme that that the Supreme Court rejected her position by a 9-0 vote. Also, she has advocated continued federal funding for abortion clinics.

Though some mysteries were resolved in the AIG bonus mess after playing “whodunit” all day Wednesday, we have yet to hear from key players in the matter on a number of questions that remain. In particular, there has been little in the way of explanation from the White House, the Treasury Secretary, the House Speaker, or the Senate Majority Leader as to how all of this happened and what they knew about it.

The main thing that was learned yesterday was about a provision inserted into the $787 billion stimulus bill that passed in February. The provision was added to the bill by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), but previously “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 after receiving federal money.” In a new interview with CNN yesterday, “Dodd told CNN . . . 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.” According to Politico, “Dodd said that ‘staff-level people’ at the Treasury Department pushed him to add what seemed like ‘innocent modifications’ to an amendment he offered to the stimulus bill — and that language, in turn, made it possible for the bailed-out insurance giant to pay its employees more than $100 million in bonuses last week.”

Though Dodd is blaming people at the Treasury Department, Bloomberg reports today, “An administration official said last night that representatives of President Barack Obama didn’t insist on the change, though they did contend that the language in Dodd’s amendment could be legally challenged because it would apply retroactively to bonus agreements.”

We have yet to learn, however, what happened to an amendment to the bill by Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Ron Wyden (D-OR), which was designed to heavily tax bonuses at any company that received a federal bailout. Wyden told Politico, “I think the administration at best is sending mixed messages.” Wyden also “said the president’s economic team ‘has not followed up, and it’s not acceptable to the American people.’”

All of this appears to have been decided during final negotiations over the stimulus bill last month. There were several key players in the room when the language of the Dodd provision was hammered out and when the fate of the Snowe-Wyden amendment was decided: White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, as well as various Treasury representatives. However, none of them have yet provided any answers as to what happened and why.

Meanwhile, there have been conflicting claims about just when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner found out about AIG’s plans to pay the bonuses. According to Reuters, “Geithner said he knew about the bonuses on March 10 and told the White House two days later. The news broke publicly last weekend.” But Time reported yesterday that “the New York Federal Reserve informed Treasury staff that the payments were imminent on Feb. 28. That is 10 days before Treasury staffers say they first learned ‘full details’ of the bonus plan, and three days before the Administration launched a new $30 billion infusion of cash for AIG.”

So it seems there are important questions that need to be answered: what happened with the language concerning bonuses in final negotiations over the stimulus bill, and why was that language changed or dropped? And when did Secretary Geithner actually find out about the AIG bonuses? Was it before he approved the extra $30 billion for AIG? It’s time Americans heard from Emanuel, Pelosi, Reid, and Geithner on all of these questions. However, we may not learn much from Treasury Secretary Geithner because 1) the Obama administration has failed to fill positions at Treasury that are critically needed to help the Secretary, and 2) President Obama said yesterday that he has full confidence in Geithner which in political speak means Obama may be about to give Geithner the "Rev. Wright Boot" out of his administration.

---

Tags: abortion, AIG, Elena Kagan, lands bill, Tim Geither, US Congress, US House, US Senate, Washington D.C. To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!