My post below lacked a proper concluding sentence, so let me make amends: Senselessbrenner for President!

Now AIG is suing the gov. In essense that means we are suing ourselves as we own AIG.
The lawyers retainer fees will be higher than 160 million.
They can't tax at 90%. It would really be scary if they pulled off something like that.
Why don't they single out celebrities and tax the heck out of them as long as they're at it.
Or a sports figure. Nothing but class war far.

I truly am shocked by the number of Janesvile area ditto-heads praising this overheated breadloaf. The silver-spoon multi-millionaire native Chicagoan took more private (ie, lobbyist) trip money over the first half of this decade than any other representative. He was one of the mouthiest supporters of Bush's Iraq debacle, with its hundreds of billions of dollars of waste and fraud, to say nothing of the thousands of American and hundreds of thousands of Iraqui lives blown away in lying mock-patriotic grandeur. And of the Patriot Act, with its unprecedented invasion of our most basic rights; and now the multi millionaire ham shamelessly poses as defender of the constitution after playing so loose and violently with it all his life? But this genius goes farther back: he was the embarrassingly blustering floor manager of the crassly political, goofy, and cynical lame-duck attempt to impeach President Clinton. Please. Cynical false-patriot from the start, just one over-feted Tory in the relentless army of millionaires covering millionaires' anatomies. And goofs are suckered in, according to plan, because of "illegal immigrants." Yes, scream about the voiceless and let the robber-barons and their bloated fellow-baron boasters meantime only grow richer. Liberty: hundreds of millions to AIG millionaire execs while taxpayers footing their bill struggle with a day's wage. Unsated greed knows no bounds. So celebrate the rich-Milwaukee-suburbs' boor - THE gross, demeaning blight on Wisconsin, of unparallelled contemporary dimension, before the eyes of the entire nation and the world.

This is all just reactionary politics; there was no secret about the AIG bonus plan. Congress and the Fed chairman (Geitner) knew of this before it happened. Geitner was all over the news shows saying he did not know until March the 10th, why then does CSPAN have him on video in front of a congressional hearing being asked on March the 3rd of the UP COMING bonuses AIG has planned? (http://hotair.com/archives/2009/03/20/vi...). Senator Dodd admitted to inserting legislation into the latest stimulus bill (http://www.courant.com/business/hc-aig-d...) at the request of the treasury department to protect these bonuses (Geitner); you remember the stimulus bill no one had a chance to read. The puppet strings are now being pulled by people at home (voters) and these politicians are running for cover by using the federal tax code to undo what they did to begin with. Be mad all you want at AIG and its practices; you should be equally upset that your/mine lawmakers created the mess that allowed AIG to do it.

Sensenbrenner is one of the only people in Congress that understands the immigration problem and how it affects the American worker. Check his voting record on not allowing amnesty and people who enter America without permission.

truecitizen, if you don't want the govt to get involved in the private sector's business, they shouldn't be getting ANY OF MY TAX DOLLARS!

Truecitizen -If they don't want to be regulated by the government, then give back the money they borrowed. Simple as that. Seems like the auto workers contracts needed to be redone for us to get the money. I haven't read too many people who complain about that. The government is only involved with this because AIG borrowed BILLIONS of dollars. I say that gives the US a right to complain about gross stupidity and greed.

Many of you who just posted responses, are assuming why he voted 'no'. Don't assume and look into it more closely.

He probably voted against it....because he doesn't want the federal government getting directly involved in the private sector's issues. Everyone (including him) agree these Execs are in the wrong. But we need to be careful. Our government is deciding which private sector's businesses are getting 'our' money for bail outs, and also who's money they can 'freeze'. Careful, this is what they do in Communist countries.

Sensenbrenner lost touch with constituents (if he ever was in touch to begin with) years ago, & I can't believe they keep re-electing him. He's a good example of how lazy voters have become when it comes to researching candidates. Instead they just vote for the familiar name. If voters keep that up, we'll never get rid of the pork spenders like Sesenbrenner

There's a shock! Sensenbrenner is a tool who would vote against his own family if it kepth his lobbyists rich. I don't know many people from both sides of the aisle who don't think this is a good idea.

Taxing the bonuses is definitely for show (and it isn't an abrogation of contract), but then the bonus issue is a distraction. It's unfortunate that everyone is focusing on the millions in bonuses instead of the billions in counterparty payments. Since we own about 80% of AIG we deserve better answers than we've been getting.
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The entire company may be tied into every bit of the economy right now, but we can't unwind those risk dependencies unless we have management who is responsive to the problem.

...or not...

http://www.abajournal.com/news/harvard_l...

mopsy,
The bill is ex post facto, and could also be a Bill of Attainder (an act of legislature declaring a person or group of persons guilty of some crime and punishing them without benefit of a trial).

“No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law will be passed.” Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 9, clause 3.

This is just a political show to help them get re-elected.
********
"I voted to tax big bonuses for AIG even though it was unconstitutional and in the end costs tax payers more money in the long run"-insert idiot politician (doing this only looking to get a lifetime position by doing this type of grandstanding because it works)name here.

I was wondering about if ex post facto applied here. Seems like the government is always messing with the tax code and that the changes apply backwards to cover the whole year. But somehow this isn't ex post facto. Could someone clear this up for me?

The tax code is meant for raising money to fund government, not for cosmic justice. Considering too, that this tax increase is ex post facto and a bill of attainder, two acts of Congress specifically prohibited by the U.S. Constitution, and the wisdom of Cong. Sensenbrenner becomes clear. They are singling out corporate big shots today, who gets singled out tomorrow?

As distasteful as the bonuses are to me, the behavior of congress is even more so. They seem to have no limits to what they do anymore. I applaud Mr. Sensenbrenner, and boo the rest.

I think Mr. Sensenbrenner was the one that was doing the right thing. If you were slated to get a bonus a year before this happened you would be outraged. At least I would be. I know that we as a people have to cut back and stop spending so we can get this economy back on track, but these were already promised before the government stepped in. Also why doesn't the Obama administration also cut back and stop spending our tax dollars? How much goverment are we going to allow in our businesses? Obama would like it to be all, Welcome to Socialism people!!

It's misplaced outrage on these $160M in bonuses that were contractually obligated. Did you know that $93 billion (over half of the bailout money AIG received) was funneled through AIG and sent to several banks in Europe ? If Congress wants to try to fix their bailout mistake, how about going after that money ?

Good going Jim - you are and will be correct on this issue of law. 2010 is not that far away people start keeping a list of who been naughty and nice. AIG filed paperwork stating these bonus, a year ago - does any body in DC read these days?? What about the Merrill Lynch $3.6B bonuses? Maybe Grassley was correct about falling on your sword, the line up should Dodd, Franks, Treasury, Congress, Senate, and then White House

Local Interest: I agree 100% with You. Wait until the next shoe falls. Congress is doing nothing more than covering their BUTT! They inserted stuff into the bills that they passed and hpoe no one would notice.

This bill is unconstitutional and will be overturned by the Supreme court. While I find AIG bonuses poor judgement by its management, I am far more disappointed in our congress and administration. They got caught with their pants down and now they are trying to paint a different picture. They wrote and passed the legislation, which allowed AIG bonuses to go forward. Everything else is just a smoke screen for their poor judgement or not reading/knowing what's in the bills they are passing. There will be more surprises.

Oh, yes, you can't change a contract, unless, of course, it is a union contract. Wake up, America, we're now taxing the poor to pay for the rich.

In my mind Jim Sensenbrenner is the only smart one in Congress yesterday. You can not pass a law to change a contract that was written in the past. I would not want the Goverment to step in and break contracts that I have entered into in the past. I've been told " Be careful what You wis For". Now more than ever.

As usual Sensenbrenner has the courage to be right even when it might look bad in the media. This is the guy who voted against the relief package for New Orleans hurricane relief not because he did not believe it was needed but becaues he (corrctly) pointed out that simply throwing money at the problem may make people feel good but wasn't going to help the people who needed it most. The bill passed and hundreds of millions of dollars ended up being wasted rather than helping those in need. He had a proposal in place to provide similar amounts of relief but with accountability.
In this case, he is again correct. The bonus payouts are wrong but the tax will and should be found unconstitutional. There are ways to pursue as he points out that are within the framework of our governments powers and they should be exercised to their fullest extent.
As wrong as these bonuses are, anyone who is not a little worried about the Congress of the United States believing that they have the power to change the tax code retroactively as a way to recover money that has already been paid out under a previous code is a bit naive IMO.