Learning more about the how the financial bailout funds have been spent is like peeling an onion – you get past one layer of problems and there’s another layer under that smells worse than the one before.
The latest issue is the $165 million in bonuses paid to AIG employees in its Financial Products division – the same division that produced the credit derivative swaps that led to the company’s financial collapse.  It is ridiculous that taxpayer dollars were being used to pay bonuses to a company that exists today only because taxpayer dollars were used to bail it out.
Not surprisingly, I can’t find anyone in Congress or the White House who thinks these bonuses are even remotely justified.  In fact, the only rationale anyone has offered so far is that these are “retention bonuses” to keep quality people.  But the New York Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo, says his investigation has uncovered that 73 employees received bonuses of $1 million or more, including 11 people who no longer work for AIG.
So, to sum it all up — taxpayers have put billions into this company to keep it afloat; in turn, the company is paying millions in bonuses to the division that put them in peril. Furthermore, 11 people who were to be paid over $1 million each in a “retention bonus” don’t even work at AIG anymore.
 I support free enterprise, but enough is enough!
 I have joined other Republican freshman members to announce legislation we are introducing to direct the U.S. Treasury Department to recoup the payment of thee AIG bonuses within two weeks.
 The administration keeps telling us how upset they are over the bonus situation and that it’s not their fault because they were not in power when the federal government came in to bail out AIG.  But a quick check of history shows that Treasury Secretary Geithner was the president and chief executive officer at the New York Federal Reserve when the government started bailing out AIG in the first place.
The administration says it wants to clamp down on the bonuses, but its hands are tied.  Well, this bill lets the White House put actions behind their words by doing the following:
 
•   Directs Treasury to implement a plan to recoup within two weeks, the payment of AIG bonuses.
•   Requires any future bonus payments, of any kind, to Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) recipients, to be approved in advance by Treasury
•   Any future contractual obligations entered into by TARP fund recipients to make bonus payments of any kind must be approved in advance by Treasury.
This bill deserves quick action because taxpayers deserve quick action.
Please feel free to contact my office if we can be of assistance to you or your family.  You can contact my office by mail, email or phone.  Our contact information can be found on our website, www.roe.house.gov.

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