Senator Charles Grassley is so outraged over the AIG bonuses that he wants the execs to either "quit or kill themselves." Representative Barney Frank is fuming about "rewarding incompetence." The cause of their anger is that AIG gave millions in bonuses to top executives after receiving billions of dollars of taxpayer bailout money. We should all be outraged as well, but not just at AIG.
We should be outraged that congress irresponsibly wrote the TARP legislation in such a way as to put no restrictions on how the money would be spent.
We should be outraged that congress irresponsibly pressured financial institutions to make loans to people who had no way to pay them back, thus precipitating the mess we're in.
We should be outraged that congress votes themselves outstanding health insurance, retirement benefits (they're vested after only five years of service at age 62), and a hefty salary ($174,000 for rank and file members) with automatic pay raises, all from the public purse.
We should be outraged that congress puts hundreds of millions of dollars of wasteful earmarks in appropriations bills that are often little more than ways to reward supporters back home.
It's certainly arrogant and disgraceful that AIG executives accepted those bonuses (The company was apparently required by contract to give them), but no more disgraceful than the behavior of our political leadership in Washington who abuse their power everyday by taking money from taxpayers and using it, either directly or indirectly, for their own personal gain.
Barack Obama promised he would end this sort of politics, but so far from ending it he's simply turned out to be an enabler of it. That should outrage us, too.
RLC