[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 8461-8469]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              AIG BONUSES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Polis). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. LaTourette) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank you for the recognition, Mr. Speaker. I want 
to thank the minority leader for granting us this hour. I'm going to be 
joined by at least two other Members, Mr. Tiberi and Mr. Austria, also 
of Ohio.
  We're going to talk a little bit about what occurred last week and 
the week before. I know the Speaker will remember that the Capitol was 
sort of roiled, and our constituents continue to be upset, as well they 
should, over the news that somehow, after getting billions of dollars 
of taxpayer funds, the insurance company, AIG, awarded $170 million in 
bonuses.
  A lot of people came to the floor last week and said they were 
shocked. As I said last week, I'm really shocked at the shock. Because 
I can't figure out how some people in this Chamber and at the other end 
of Pennsylvania Avenue can be shocked when they approved the language 
that authorized the bonuses.
  Just a little bit of history here, Mr. Speaker. When the economic 
recovery plan or the stimulus bill was making its way through the 
United States Congress, there was an amendment offered by two Senators, 
a Democratic Senator from Oregon, Senator Wyden, and a Republican 
Senator from Maine, Senator Snowe. That would have put a limitation on 
bonuses like in the AIG case and in other cases that basically said 
that if you're receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer funds to bail 
you out, perhaps you shouldn't be giving millions dollars away in 
bonuses at this moment in time. If you're not taking the taxpayer 
money, you run your business the way you see fit.
  Well, that amendment by Senators Snowe and Wyden was adopted by a 
voice vote in the Senate and was included in the Senate version of the 
stimulus bill. So I read about it in the newspaper and I thought: Okay, 
the bill is in pretty good shape.
  When the bill went into the conference committee--and, Mr. Speaker, I 
know you know this, but for those who may not be conversant with how 
things work here, we pass a bill over here, the Senate passes a bill 
over there, then each House appoints a few Members and they meet in a 
room and they sort out the differences between the two bills and then 
we eventually get a conference report.
  Now, in years past--this is my 15th year in the Congress--that 
conference committee always included Republicans and Democrats. We, 
being Republicans, were in the majority party for 12 years. The 
Democrats would come into the room, the Republicans would come into the 
room, the Representatives would come into the room, the Senators would 
come into the room, and we'd hash out the differences and then at the 
end of the process everybody who's on the conference committee would 
sign the report, and that's what you have.
  Sadly, even though people have discussed this being the most 
transparent administration, the most transparent Congress in the 
history of the country, no Republicans were invited into the conference 
room. Clearly, what we have seen--sadly, what we have seen--is that 
this Congress is about as transparent as this envelope. We are not 
being included. You know what? We don't have to be included. We are in 
the minority, and clearly the majority party can write legislation as 
they see fit. But what they can't do is what happened last week.
  So in this conference room all of a sudden somehow the Snowe-Wyden 
language is removed that would have stopped these bonuses from 
happening. And the words behind me--they're only about 50 words on the 
chart behind me--were inserted.
  This language specifically authorized the payment of millions of 
dollars of bonuses to people at AIG and anywhere else. So anybody who 
voted--when it came to us back in the House for a vote, this language 
was included in the bill.
  So the reason I said I was shocked at people's shock is that anybody 
that voted for the stimulus bill voted to give and authorize and 
protect the bonuses at AIG and any other company that has taken billion 
of dollars through the bailout program.
  We don't know--and I know the Speaker will remember last week we were 
on the floor for about an hour trying to figure out how it did it 
happen. We started with I talked about the fact that there's a face 
book. There are 435 Members of Congress, 100 Senators. We began 
crossing them out. We got down to about 520 during the course of that 
hour. I indicated we would come back and report to the Speaker the 
progress of this search. I'm pleased to report to you that we have made 
significant progress. My friends and I are going to talk about that 
this evening.
  First of all, we can remove all 178 Republicans because there were no 
Republican Representatives in the room. We can also remove all 41 
Republican Senators because they were not in the room. And I mentioned 
that we also have this Senate race that is unresolved in Minnesota so 
we can cross off Al Franken and Senator Coleman. They are not the 
culprits in this particular case.
  So we got down to a smaller group that we are going to talk about. 
But then our group expanded because there are a couple of news reports 
out that there were people from the administration that were also 
participating in these negotiations. So we had to add a few suspects to 
figure it out.
  What is disappointing is that in a transparent administration, in a 
transparent Congress, people make mistakes. Everybody makes a mistake. 
I probably made three before lunch today. But when you make a mistake, 
you should say: I made a mistake.

                              {time}  1930

  What is not acceptable is to compound the mistake by pretending you 
didn't know about it; and then when you are caught, you come up with 
some goofy piece of legislation like we had on the floor last week to 
tax people at 90 percent.
  And I have got to tell you, that was political theater. It never is 
going to become law. These people that are so outraged about AIG 
executive bonuses, they are going to get their bonuses because that 
bill is not going anywhere. My friend Steve Austria is going to talk 
about that in just a second, but that is never going to become law. 
That was to provide cover for people who voted for the Economic 
Recovery

[[Page 8462]]

Bill, because they found out, sadly, that they had authorized these 50 
words that protected the AIG bonuses, and now they are shocked.
  Now, on our side, I have to tell you that we were kind of saddened. 
Even though we don't need to be invited into the rooms, we don't have 
to be invited to negotiate, before the stimulus bill came to a vote in 
the House a motion was made, and the motion said that before any Member 
of Congress is asked to vote on the stimulus bill we are going to have 
48 hours to read it. Every Member of this House, every Republican and 
every Democrat that was here voted to give the Members 48 hours to read 
the bill. And if you think about that, Mr. Speaker, that is probably a 
good idea, because the bill was over 1,000 pages long.
  Well, sometime between Tuesday when every Member said we are going to 
get 48 hours, and Friday when we voted on the bill, people forgot that 
promise. And on our side, at least, we were given 90 minutes, 90 
minutes to read 1,000 pages to determine whether or not we could be 
supportive of the President's most important domestic economic policy 
position.
  I voted ``no,'' and I don't have any problem with the fact that I 
voted ``no.'' There were some good things in the stimulus bill, there 
were horrible things in the stimulus bill. But I couldn't go home to 
Cleveland and say to people, yeah, I voted for it, because I didn't 
read it. And I don't think any Member of this Chamber read the bill. If 
they did, more power to them, but I doubt everybody read the thousand 
pages.
  But what that leads to is an embarrassment, and the embarrassment is 
everybody that voted for the stimulus bill voted to give the bonuses to 
AIG. And then to cover their tracks, they come up with this, oh, let's 
tax at 90 percent.
  Which, if you think about it, that is pretty silly, too, because 
let's say the guy at AIG got $5 million in the bonus. Under that bill, 
he still gets to keep one-half million dollars. So if you are so 
outraged, why don't you take all of the money away from them? Forget 
about the Constitutional arguments and the bills of attainder and all 
that other business. It was political theater, and it makes you sad 
when that happens.
  So we are going to spend the remainder of our time this evening 
attempting to sort of ferret out who was in the room. And I have good 
news, because the Secretary of the Treasury was at the Financial 
Services Committee today, Mr. Geithner, and the Secretary was asked if 
he was in the room when this happened and he said he was not. So we can 
cross off the Secretary of the Treasury; he was not in the room when 
this was done.
  Last week, during the course of the debate on Ms. Kilroy's resolution 
saying that the administration was doing everything that they could to 
stop these bonuses, we asked the chairman of the Financial Services 
Committee, Mr. Frank of Massachusetts. He said he wasn't in the room, 
so he is off the list as well. And the Speaker actually indicated the 
other day, Speaker Pelosi, that nobody from the House did it, and so we 
have to look elsewhere, I guess. And we are going to talk a little bit 
about that.
  But first, to sort of set the table on this bill, this 90 percent tax 
bill that was political theater, that was a farce, that was a fig tree 
to cover people who had made a mistake, I want to yield for a minute to 
my friend Steve Austria from Ohio just to talk about what we think the 
prognosis is for this tax bill.
  Mr. AUSTRIA. I thank the gentleman from Ohio for yielding, I think 
next to the leader, our senior Member from Ohio. I thank you for 
yielding. And it is an important issue.
  Being a new Member of Congress, having served less than 100 days in 
Congress, to be faced with what we are facing right now, the amount of 
spending, the amount of borrowing, the amount of debt that is 
accumulating. I didn't come to Congress--I have three sons at home--to 
pass this type of debt on to our children.
  But specifically talking about the bailout, talking about AIG and 
what has happened, one of the first bills that I was asked to vote on 
was the second half of the TARP, the financial market bailout, the $700 
billion bailout, something that I felt when I was running for office 
looking from the outside in was a bad idea, for government to get 
involved, to not have accountability, not have transparency, and not 
have a plan; have, as the gentleman from Ohio described, a plan that 
was brokered behind closed doors by a small group of individuals. As a 
Member of Congress, I have to tell you that my views haven't changed.
  On that particular bill, when we voted on that bill I could not find 
answers on how the $350 billion, the first half of the $700 billion 
bailout, how that money was spent, could not find as far as any type of 
specific plan from the Department of the Treasury on how they were 
going to turn around the financial markets. There was no 
accountability, and I had a real problem with that with the TARP bill.
  Now, as the gentleman from Ohio talked about with the stimulus bill, 
language that was inserted in a bill, and which Leader Boehner stood on 
this floor and held up 1,100 pages, approximately, that not one Member 
had the opportunity to read before we voted on, to me, that is a 
terrible reason to be passing a bill. We should have had an opportunity 
to read that bill and understand what was in it before we voted on it.
  But when you have no accountability, when you have no transparency, 
when you have no specific plan on how you are going to use that money 
to turn the financial markets around, when you have no opportunity to 
read the stimulus or spending bill, what that equals is disaster. And 
that is what we saw last week. We saw outrage. We saw the American 
people beginning to understand for the first time what was happening 
here in D.C. when 160-some million dollars of bonuses were paid out to 
executives and employees, of their hard-earned money, $170 billion of 
their hard-earned taxpayer money that was used to bail out the same 
company.
  I do believe we had some opportunities to do better. In an effort to 
try to resolve this situation, one of the things that I did was stand 
up with 14 members of our freshman class and introduce a bill to try to 
get that money back; doing in a different way, rather than raising 
taxes at 90 percent, getting 100 percent of that money back, asking the 
Department of the Treasury to use every resource they had available to 
get that money back within 2 weeks; to ensure that any future 
contracts, that the Department of the Treasury would sign off on those 
contracts and know what we are using that bailout money for. After all, 
the government now owns, I believe it is, 80 percent of AIG.
  Unfortunately, we haven't had any hearings on that bill, and it 
doesn't appear as though it is going to move. The opposite side decided 
they were going to come up with a different solution with a 90 percent 
tax, to try to move that forward.
  But what is happening here, and I know many people are getting their 
quarterly statements, their financial statements, they are beginning to 
see their accounts, their 401(k) and retirement accounts, their 
children's education funds, their savings accounts. They are down 
significantly. We have had calls into our office where people have lost 
40 percent, 50 percent of their money, and they are very concerned as 
to what is happening with the financial market bailouts. And I think we 
have an opportunity and we have an obligation to turn things around, to 
ensure that the taxpayers' dollars, the $700 billion that passed this 
body and is being used to bail out the financial markets, that there is 
accountability on the how that money is being spent, that there is 
transparency, so we know exactly what is happening, that there is a 
plan in place so that we can better understand.
  What we are finding out is that some of the dollars that have been 
spent were bad investments. I am looking at testimony from Elizabeth 
Warren from the Congressional Oversight Panel to the Senate Banking 
Committee, that talks about how the Treasury invested about $254 
billion in assets that were worth only approximately $176 billion,

[[Page 8463]]

a shortfall of $78 billion. We can do better than that.
  When you talk about the $165 million bonuses that were paid out to 
these employees--and I am looking at a news article, this is from the 
New York Post last week, ``Fully, 73 executives got $1 million or more 
each, of whom 22 were paid at least $2 million, while seven got $4 
million, and one lucky duck pocketed a cool $6.4 million.''
  We can do better than that. The American people expect us to do 
better than that and deserve better than that. But what all this is 
doing is creating uncertainty in the market when you don't have a plan 
and there is no accountability for these dollars.
  In my prior life before being a State legislator for 10 years and 
coming to Congress, I was a small business owner, I was a financial 
advisor. And one thing I can tell you that is certain is that our 
financial markets, our businesses, they don't like uncertainty. And we 
are seeing big fluctuations in the market right now, we are seeing a 
lot of downturn in the market right now I think because of that 
uncertainty.
  I think because of public pressure, the American people stepping 
forward and saying enough is enough and being outraged about this, that 
we are finally starting to see a plan brought forward that we hope will 
help resolve some of this problem that has transpired as a result of 
this legislation.
  I will yield back my time to the gentleman from Ohio. I thank you for 
the opportunity to speak on this, and thank you for bringing this issue 
forward. It is very important.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I want to thank my friend from Ohio (Mr. Austria). 
Your comments really bring out why that tax piece of legislation that 
was political theater, that was a fraud was such a lousy piece of 
legislation.
  If we take the fellow, or it might have been a woman, that you have 
just identified that got $6.4 million worth of bonuses, the Democratic 
tax bill that used the Tax Code to punish people for the first time, at 
least in my memory, to that extent, that person still got to keep 
$640,000. Why? Why? If they shouldn't have gotten any money, they 
shouldn't have gotten any money. So why do you give them just 10 
percent?
  I promised, Mr. Speaker, that we would attempt to move forward and 
try to solve this mystery. Now, it would be easier if somebody would 
just come forward and say ``I did it.'' You know, ``I did it. I am 
Professor Plum; I am Colonel Mustard, and I did it.'' But we don't have 
anybody that has been forthcoming on Capitol Hill or down at the White 
House or at the Department of the Treasury, except for Mr. Geithner and 
Barney Frank and the people that I mentioned that were not in the room 
when this happened.
  So with apologies to our friends from Hasbro, we have sort of put 
this in the form of the game of Clue, which a lot of us, Mr. Speaker, 
played as we were growing up, we play with our kids. And if you are not 
familiar with the game of Clue, Mr. Speaker, basically a crime is 
committed and the junior detectives have to try and solve the crime. 
And the successful person, the winner, identifies where it happened, 
who did it, and with what weapon.
  Now, we start with a pretty good advantage here this evening because 
we know what the weapon is. We know that somebody took out the language 
that would have prohibited these bonuses that were paid out and put in 
the language that is over Mr. Tiberi's shoulder. And so we know it was 
done in writing, and the weapon at the bottom of this chart was a pen. 
So we are one-third of the way there, and now we just need to figure 
out where it took place and by whom.
  And just to sort of go around with the whoms, we don't have Colonel 
Mustard, we don't have Ms. Scarlet, but what we do have are people who 
were either conferees or made observations or news accounts that we 
will get into in a minute indicate were in the room.
  Beginning at the bottom on my right is Charles Rangel of New York, 
who is the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee; he was a conferee, 
he signed the conference report.
  Next is Rahm Emanuel, who is the President's Chief of Staff, used to 
serve with us here in the Congress representing a part of Illinois in 
the United States Congress.
  At the top, the former president of Harvard University, Larry 
Summers, who is now an economic advisor to President Obama.
  At the top is Senator Dodd. Now, I have to say Senator Dodd in a lot 
of early news accounts was blamed for it. I am feeling kind of bad for 
Senator Dodd, because the last thing I saw him say was that, ``Somebody 
at Treasury said to put it in, and so my staff put it in.'' But clearly 
Senator Dodd is getting fingered for a lot of this. But if he did it, 
he should say so. If he didn't do so, he should say, ``I didn't do 
it.''
  Over in the upper left-hand corner is the Speaker of the House, Ms. 
Pelosi of California. Again, the news accounts kind of indicate that 
this took place in her office, but we are not going to get there yet.
  Harry Reid, if you read, Mr. Speaker, yesterday's Roll Call, people 
have expressed concern as to the fact that he appointed himself as the 
majority leader in the Senate as a conferee, and that he may or may not 
have ties to AIG, and some questions are being raised.
  And, at the bottom is David Obey, the very distinguished chairman of 
the Appropriations Committee who was also a conferee and in the room at 
least some of the time.

                              {time}  1945

  But let's talk for just a minute, Mr. Tiberi. Can you shed any light 
based on what you know or what you have heard that may help us sort of 
narrow this thing down?
  Mr. TIBERI. Thank you for your leadership. I would certainly like to 
thank you for bringing this matter to light this evening and last week. 
I know both of you have shared the same experience that I have shared 
back in my district. People are dying to know what happened and when? 
Who was responsible for this? As you said, the Senator from Connecticut 
has said that somebody from the administration or somebody from 
Treasury instructed them to put this language in the bill.
  I think it is interesting to note the language behind me that you 
talked about earlier wouldn't have gotten in the bill if, if we had 
transparency from the beginning, something that the new President has 
talked about, talked about during the campaign, talked about repeatedly 
during the campaign. In fact, as both of you know, our Speaker of the 
House talked about transparency before she became Speaker and how this 
was going to be the most transparent House ever, the people's House, 
and the fact is, not only on this legislation, but this certainly 
demonstrates it, but on countless pieces of legislation, there has been 
anything but transparency. And transparency has led to what this chart 
is really all about, and that is finding out who knew what when?
  People in my district are outraged that this language ended up in 
this stimulus bill without anybody knowing about it, anybody but 
apparently the author of the amendment, but most everyone else, 
allegedly, didn't know about this important wording that allowed AIG 
officials to receive millions of dollars in bonuses.
  In fact, I don't know if the gentleman has an answer for this, as I 
digress a bit, there was a news report today that over half of the 
bonuses that were paid to AIG went to non-Americans.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Taking 1 minute of my time. I have not seen that news 
report. The news report that I'm familiar with--and if that is true, 
that is kind of shocking--is that 11 people of the 73 didn't work for 
the company anymore. So you have 11 out of 73 who aren't even at AIG 
anymore, and so if they are retention bonuses, they didn't work so 
well, because they don't work for AIG anymore.
  I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. TIBERI. We are getting more questions on the table than answers. 
And that is what happens when you don't have transparency. That is what 
happens when backroom deals are cut, backroom deals on this stimulus 
bill that was done back in February.
  In fact, Mr. LaTourette, I will quote from a Los Angeles Times 
article back

[[Page 8464]]

in February that in the first major piece of legislation pushed by the 
President, transparency was missing. In fact, the President has no 
constitutional authority to set rules for Congress. But he suggested he 
would use his influence to see that Congress doesn't conduct its work 
``in the dead of night and behind closed doors,'' which is exactly what 
happened in this process.
  The Times article goes on to say, Mr. Speaker, maybe we can add a 
picture here to your graph, important negotiating sessions devoted to 
the stimulus took place in a congressional office outside public view, 
Representative Henry A. Waxman (D) Beverly Hills said he was in the 
meeting about the stimulus plan Tuesday night in the office of House 
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D) San Francisco. Among the participants was 
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.
  So, one person who says he was in the meeting in negotiations was the 
chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. But still, my question 
back to you would be, do you have to be in the meeting to instruct 
conferees in the dead of night in one of these offices to put something 
in this bill? Because you could still have the Treasury Secretary 
instruct everybody else that this is an important measure by telephone, 
couldn't you?
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Well, you could. And taking back my time, I will tell 
you that there are telephones, but the gentleman is making our task 
much more difficult if you continue to widen the net and now we have to 
deal with Mr. Waxman and others. But sure, conceivably.
  I would just say that today--I don't think it was under oath, but 
you're not supposed to lie to Congress--the Treasury Secretary did 
indicate that he only found out about it on March 10, which is pretty 
amazing, and that he understands that staff did it, but he really 
doesn't know a lot about it, and he knows he didn't do it. So, yeah, it 
could have been somebody outside the room.
  Mr. TIBERI. If the gentleman will yield, certainly I think as we 
continue forward having a special investigation, an Inspector General 
report trying to get to the bottom of this, if someone doesn't come 
forward and say, yes, this is the language that I wanted, and this is 
the reason why, and X number of people that were paid were paid 
retention bonuses, and by the way, we weren't able to retain them, and 
by the way, over half the bonuses were paid to non-Americans, which is 
outrageous in the first place.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Taking back my time, I thank the gentleman for that. 
And I hope we don't need to have an investigation. I would hope that 
whoever screwed up would come forward and say, do you know what? I did 
it. And then tell us why he or she did it rather than hiding behind the 
skirts of staff and hiding behind this bogus tax bill that we did last 
week. I would really hope somebody would come forward and do it.
  But the other thing I would tell my friend is we don't need to wait 
for an investigation. Tomorrow in the House Financial Services 
Committee chaired by the aforementioned Congressman Frank of 
Massachusetts, a number of us have filed something known as a 
``resolution of inquiry.'' And the resolution of inquiry requests the 
Treasury Department to provide to the Congress, not to me, not to the 
Republicans, but to the Congress, all documents that they have in their 
possession that will help us identify--if the person won't come forward 
and say, ``I did it,'' then this resolution of inquiry would direct 
them to give us the documents so we can figure it out and not add 
expense on top of the taxpayer in trying to ferret out who did this 
thing.
  Again, I wish somebody, as I said last week, would just man up and 
say they did it.
  Mr. TIBERI. Would the gentleman yield? And you're being far too 
modest because the resolution does much more than that. And in fact, in 
reading a poll today, over half of the American people believe that AIG 
should be broken up. And part of your resolution does just that, if you 
want to expand upon that.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Well, that's exactly right. The resolution not only 
asks for documents, but it indicates that the American public now own, 
as Mr. Austria has indicated, 80 percent of AIG. And quite frankly, I 
will say something bad about the Republican administration. I thought 
President Bush and his Secretary of the Treasury were wrong in asking 
for this $700 billion. The mantra was that these institutions are too 
big to fail. Well, most Americans now recognize that they are too big 
period. And as a result, they should be broken into pieces, going back 
to Teddy Roosevelt and the trustbusters. Let's break these things 
apart.
  So we do have legislation to divide this thing up. And I hope that it 
is favorably considered. And as you mentioned, about 60 percent of the 
American public think that is a good idea.
  Mr. TIBERI. I know that you're pushing that legislation. You have 
many cosponsors. But some think we are too busy to deal with that 
important legislation. I think you have a chart that demonstrates maybe 
we are not.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. We are not. And I do want to--well, let's do that 
now, and then we will come back to seeing if we can move along in the 
game of Clue. And maybe if the gentleman will help me.
  Mr. TIBERI. The gentleman from Ohio has a chart that just shows an 
amazing----
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. And you could sort of be my Carol Merrill. I would 
appreciate that.
  Last year we used the chart that Mr. Tiberi is going to give me a 
hand with. And people may remember back home that gasoline prices 
started high and they ended up even higher. And for the entire month of 
August, we spent time on the floor arguing that perhaps we should have 
an energy policy in this country that considered everything, renewable 
energy, solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear in the mix, together with 
additional exploration for fossil fuels which we are going to need in 
the near term at least. But we were told we were too busy. We were 
very, very busy here in the United States Congress. And so we didn't 
have a chance to get things going.
  As, Mr. Speaker, you will remember, the Republicans did such a bang-
up job in the majority that they threw us out in the 2006 elections and 
installed the Democratic majority. And we are honored to have Speaker 
Pelosi being the first woman to serve in that position since the 
beginning of the country. So when Ms. Pelosi and her colleagues became 
the majority party, gas was about $2.22, and the most important piece 
of legislation that folks thought we could discuss here on the floor 
was congratulating the University of California-Santa Barbara soccer 
team for winning something. Now I like soccer. And I'm sure that 
everybody's parents of that team are proud. And gas was only $2.22. So, 
okay, let's congratulate people.
  Then gas went up to $2.84, and the most important thing that we had 
to do on the floor that day was to declare it--that was about September 
6--declare it National Passport Month. And I began getting calls, I'm 
sure you guys got calls from people saying, Hey, it's really costing a 
lot of money to fill up my tank. Well, gas went up to $3.03, and on 
that day, the new majority determined that the most important thing we 
could do was commend the Houston Dynamo soccer team for I suppose 
winning something as well. And we are told that as elected officials 
you really have to get the soccer moms. And I guess this was an attempt 
to really make sure we had the soccer moms squared away, because we 
passed two pieces of legislation dealing with soccer.
  Then gas went to $3.77. And so clearly, we are going to talk about 
gas prices now, right? No. We declared it National Train Day was what 
we did then. And then gas goes up a little more to $3.84. And what did 
we do that day? Oh, we passed the Great Cats and Rare Canids Act. And I 
didn't know--talk about reading things, I know what a cat is. I didn't 
know what a canid is. It is a dog. And so we celebrated Dog and Cat Day 
when gas is $3.84.
  It goes up to $4.09, and the most important thing to do is to declare 
the

[[Page 8465]]

International Year of Sanitation. That's what we did around here. Then 
the price of gas goes up to $4.14. My phones are ringing off the hook. 
So clearly, we are going to talk about gas prices then. No, we passed 
the Monkey Safety Act here in the United States Congress. So you would 
think that maybe people would be chastened by that when we are no 
longer talking about gas prices. And sadly I hope we don't go the way 
that we did in the 1970s. Now that gas is down to about $1.89, I hope 
we don't forget about when it was $4 a gallon and make those serious 
investments in renewables and get us off of carbon-based fuel and make 
us not dependent on countries around the world that don't like us.
  Well, this year, as everybody knows that isn't living under a rock, 
we have a little bit of an economic crisis going on. And you would 
think that we would attempt to deal with that in a constructive way. On 
January 6 of this year, which was the first day of the 111th Congress, 
that is the opening day of this Congress, the stock market, the Dow 
Jones industrial, was at 9,015 points.
  We get to January 20, and that is the day, of course, our new 
President, Barack Obama, became the 44th President of the United 
States. It was a very exciting day. All of us were pretty happy about 
it. But the stock market took a little dip. Now that is not President 
Obama's fault, because he was just getting sworn in that day. But the 
Congress, however, had a responsibility because we had already been in 
almost 1 month now by the time you get to February 2. The stock market 
goes down to 7,936, and the most important thing we can do on the House 
floor is to pass a resolution supporting the Goals and Ideals of 
National Teen Dating. That was a pretty important issue back in Ohio. 
I'm glad we took care of it.
  The stock market dips a little bit further, and on that day, I guess 
because it didn't go down quite 100 points, and so we commended Sam 
Bradford for winning the Heisman trophy. Now, I'm sure that Mr. 
Bradford's family is proud of him. I'm proud of him. And anybody that 
wins the Heisman trophy is deserving of our congratulations. But when 
the stock market is in the tank and people are losing their 401(k)s, I 
don't know if that is the most important thing, but now it takes a 
precipitous dip down to 7,114, and, oh, son of a gun, 2 years in a row, 
we passed the Monkey Safety Act. And I don't want to make light of it 
this time because there was a horrible situation in Connecticut where a 
woman was attacked by a chimpanzee and suffered horrible injuries. And 
so clearly our thoughts and prayers with her, and that is a terrible 
event. However when the stock market is down to 7,114 and people have 
lost their life savings, clearly, the Monkey Safety Act was not the 
thing that was foremost on the mind of my constituents.
  Actually, the interesting thing to show you how busy we were on that 
date of February 23, and it had only been 8 days before that the 
chimpanzee attacked the woman, and so we, as the greatest legislative 
body in the world, rushed in 8 days to pass the Monkey Safety Act. Then 
it went down a little bit further, and we, you know, like the soccer 
moms, we like animals, and so we passed the Shark Conservation Act on 
that particular day, not dealing with the economic crisis.
  Then we sort of roll out to March 9. And this probably was my 
favorite resolution. We supported pi. And when I read the schedule that 
morning, I like pie, just look at me. And I thought what kind of 
``pie'' is it going to be? Well, it is not p-i-e, it is p-i, which you 
know, Mr. Speaker, is 3.1416. And apparently we felt that when the 
stock market had lost 3,000 points in value in 2 months, rather than 
helping our constituents deal with that and using the full might of the 
United States Congress to get to the bottom of that, we recognized pi 
here in the United States Congress.
  So I don't think--and this has been sort of tongue in cheek, but I 
don't think we are too busy.
  Mr. AUSTRIA. And I appreciate you pointing this out, because while 
all this is happening, the three of us represent the State of Ohio, 
there are real families out there that are hurting right now that we 
are asking to make sacrifices.

                              {time}  2000

  There are over 900,000 businesses in the State of Ohio, and small 
businesses that make up 70 percent of our workforce out there across 
this country that are struggling to make payroll, they can't get 
financing. They can't get debt. And instead of dealing directly with 
their problem, I mean, you laid out what has been happening here in 
Congress. But in addition to that, we passed the $700 billion TARP 
bailout with no accountability, in my opinion, not enough transparency. 
There was no specific plan by the Department of the Treasury. Then we 
passed the stimulus bill which contains the language that allows the 
bonuses to be paid out that you pointed out earlier; not an opportunity 
for any Member of this Congress to read that bill before we vote on it 
and pass it.
  And then, you know, our constituents back home, hardworking Americans 
across this country are getting their quarterly statements and they are 
seeing their account values down. They are struggling to make it right 
now. And they turn on the television and they see that these executives 
from AIG are getting $100 million of bonuses of the $170 billion 
bailout that we gave to them of hard working taxpayers' dollar. These 
are the same officials that, you know, and were probably involved in a 
lot of these risky investments that brought AIG down to begin with.
  And so what does the House do? We then rush a bill through to try to 
regain some of that money for our mistakes by trying to pass a 90 
percent tax on this money to try to get it back, 90 percent of it back.
  And I am reading from The Hill today, seeing where the headline on 
the front page here is ``House Bonus Bill Is Buried By the Senate.'' 
That despite the public outcry, despite the reaction that the House had 
in trying to get that money back, which I don't think we ever should 
have been in that position to begin with, that bill appears to be not 
moving in the Senate right now.
  I yield back.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the gentleman for his observations. And if 
the gentleman would go to the jump on Page 8, you will find a quote 
from the President of the United States, President Obama that I think 
sort of echoes at least my sentiments. And he said we shouldn't use the 
tax code to punish people and that is why he is not in favor of this 
bill, which is why that bill was a piece of political theater to give 
cover to people who are embarrassed because, by voting ``aye'' on the 
economic recovery package, they specifically authorized, with the 
amendment that is on the chart that we were talking about before--thank 
you Mr. Tiberi--that specifically authorized this paragraph, these 50 
words. And when you voted for the economic recovery bill, you voted to 
give the people at AIG and everywhere else the bonuses. And then, you 
know, because nobody read it, we are shocked. And so now we are going 
to use the Tax Code to punish people.
  But you know, the President has said that is wrong, and apparently 
the Senate majority leader has said it is wrong.
  Before we go back to our exercise in Clue, however, as we want to 
narrow this thing down if we can, because we are going to come back 
every week until somebody has the--I promised my wife I would be really 
tactful this evening and not use words that people find offensive. So 
somebody has the courage to stand up and say I did it and here is why I 
did it and sort of, you know, be a grown up about it.
  But you were here, you have been here now to four or five terms, Mr. 
Tiberi, and I am going to yield to you. I mean, is it your experience 
as a Member that we are just so busy that we don't have time to deal 
with gas prices?
  Mr. TIBERI. I think the gentleman is right on target here. And as 
stocks tank, let me tell you, it impacts everybody. It impacts those 
police officers

[[Page 8466]]

that protect our streets, firefighters, who are working in a courageous 
line of work, teachers in Ohio, as you know, who are part of a state 
teachers retirement system. As someone whose dad lost his pension and 
health care and job in high school, when someone sees their pension 
related to the stock market tank, sees their moms and dads seeing their 
children's college funds absolutely go into the ground, this is 
important. It impacts every single family out there as this market has 
tanked. And what are we doing? We are debating the Shark Conservation 
Act. In fact, the last several weeks, to your point, we have debated 
noncontroversial issues that have passed nearly unanimously, and not 
taken up the hard stuff like your resolution that could come to the 
floor.
  In fact, let me just add one thing. Today the leader, John Boehner, 
put together a working group with respect to savings, and I was part of 
that group. And we unveiled a blueprint that will help American 
families and American savers. And unfortunately, based upon past 
history, that piece of legislation will not see the light of day. And 
it is not like we are spending a lot of time around here passing 
substantive pieces of legislation. And when we do, we don't get to read 
it.
  And what else was in that stimulus bill that was as controversial as 
this? We don't know. That may be another exercise for us to find out 
what other controversial measures, in addition to the game of Clue, I 
think we know it was the Speaker's Office, based on press reports, but 
maybe it was the Senate leader's office. Maybe it was on the other side 
of the Capitol.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Taking back my time. I want to get back to that, but 
before I do, the gentleman's point is right on the money. In the last 
2\1/2\ years, the American public can rest assured that they will not 
go into a post office in this country that doesn't have a name on it 
because we spend a lot of our time naming Post Offices. But what they 
can't rest assured is who put those 50 words in the economic recovery 
bill that authorized the payments of bonuses to these AIG officials; 
and now they are horrified, shocked and everything else.
  And just before we leave this, so that the three of us don't get a 
lot of e-mails and hate mail from animal lovers, all three of us want 
sharks to be conserved, and all three of us think that we should have 
safe monkeys in this country. But we don't, none of us think that it is 
the most important issue facing the country last year or this year.
  Now, back to the Clue, and I think that Mr. Tiberi makes a pretty 
good point because we do have--when you play Clue you try to collect 
clues. And there have been some clues recently. And I want to refer to 
one. On Anderson Cooper, a show on CNN, Dana Bash, who some of us see 
as a reporter that covers politics here in Washington, I have a 
transcript of her reporting on the night that this happened, that the 
crime happened. And I will submit it for the Record, Madam Speaker.
  And Dana Bash says, ``well, Anderson, as we speak, the White House 
Chief of Staff, Mr. Emanuel, and the President's Budget Director are 
inside Nancy Pelosi's office.''
  Mr. TIBERI. Not to interrupt, but should we add the Budget Director 
to the chart?
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Well next time we come back we are going to put the 
Budget Director because he is up there too. And then she goes on to 
report, and, in fact, they have been coming up on 8 hours straight. 
Eight hours straight shuttling between the House Speaker's Office, and 
that is why we can't get quite to the Speaker's office yet because of 
this reporting. But maybe we will get there a little bit later. 
Shuttling between the Speaker's office and the Senate majority leader, 
Harry Reid's office urgently trying, attempting to broker a compromise 
between House Democrats and Senate Democrats. And you know what is 
interesting about that sentence is I didn't hear the word Republican in 
there. So this was Democrats negotiating with Democrats negotiating 
with Democrats. And we now know that we had the President's Budget 
Director was here for 8 hours shuttling back and forth, a little 
shuttle diplomacy, together with the President's Chief of Staff, Mr. 
Emanuel, who was also there. So I think we are getting closer.
  And if it is all right with you gentlemen, I would like to exclude 
Mr. Obey because I don't think his fingerprints are on this. And Mr. 
Rangel, I do have an observation from Mr. Rangel, who indicated that, 
Mr. Rangel, in this same report, and actually this was in the 
Congressional Quarterly, House and Senate Democratic negotiators met in 
the Speaker's Office--and we are really getting close to the Speaker's 
Office here, Madam Speaker--with the White House Chief of Staff, 
Emanuel and White House Budget Director Peter Orzag into the evening 
Tuesday, breaking at 9 p.m. and then Chairman Rangel is quoted in this 
reporting, ``it is so difficult to talk with a body that is controlled 
by three people. You have no idea.''
  So I think that the distinguished chairman of the Ways and Means 
Committee is expressing frustration that three people, basically, 
figured out how to spend $792 billion in an economic recovery package 
and okayed these 50 words that authorized the payment of bonuses to AIG 
and other people similarly situated. So I think we are getting a little 
closer.
  Mr. TIBERI. I think what he is saying is three Members of the Senate. 
We have two Members of the Senate on the Clue board, so I keep, you 
know, I keep wanting to take names off, but maybe we should add another 
picture there. We have got to figure out who the other Senator was that 
he is speaking about.
  I do think we can take off the chairman of the Ways and Means 
Committee, Mr. Rangel. I feel pretty confident he wasn't the one.
  I think we can take the chairman of the Appropriations Committee off. 
But I am thinking we need to add a couple too.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Well, I do too. And let me just get to that for a 
second. And there was another article that appeared on March 19, and 
the headline is that the ``White House Staff Botched It''. And this 
was, appeared in something called the Huffington Post, which is clearly 
not a conservative Republican organization. But I would submit this for 
the Record as well.
  It quotes an AIG executive, well, the article says according to AIG, 
the payments were okayed by the White House last Thursday. Why? Because 
it appears that David Axelrod, now we have got to add somebody else, 
senior policy advisor to the Obama administration and Rahm Emanuel 
grossly underestimated how infuriating this would be.
  The quote from the AIG executive is this: ``We were not authorized 
until Thursday night,'' that, is to give out these millions of dollars 
in bonuses. ``We were negotiating with the Treasury and the Federal 
Reserve. Treasury indicated that they needed it cleared by The White 
House as well. We hit the go for the payments on Friday,'' after they 
got the clearance from the White House.
  Mr. TIBERI. I think again it is important to note, interrupting, and 
I apologize for interrupting, what Mr. Austria said earlier in which 
Americans are beginning to find out and are very troubled with, is that 
the American people own 80 percent of AIG. So somebody had to approve 
it with the Federal Government, and maybe that is the smoking gun.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Maybe. Well, the smoking pen. We have got the pen.
  Mr. AUSTRIA. Point of clarification. I assume the pen has been 
eliminated, right?
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. We know it is the pen.
  Mr. AUSTRIA. Well, somebody had to put that in there and write it in 
there. Somebody had to use the pen.
  But no, I appreciate the point that the gentleman from Columbus made. 
Or is Columbus correct?
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. New Albany, I think.
  Mr. AUSTRIA. I wanted to make sure I got that right for Central Ohio. 
But I think that is a very important point.
  When the government owns 80 percent of a company and not knowing

[[Page 8467]]

what is going on and we can't get an answer as to who put this language 
in. I mean, I appreciate the gentleman from Ohio with this game of Clue 
because I think that it is as good as any other methodology that I know 
of trying to figure out who is responsible for putting that language in 
because we are not getting the clear answers. We are not getting a 
specific answer to that question.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the gentleman. And I think we are making some 
progress because we have a weapon, it was the pen. We are getting down 
in the suspect list. And I am comfortable, if you gentlemen are 
comfortable saying that this crime was committed either in the 
Speaker's Office or in the Senate leaders office because all of the--
  Mr. TIBERI. Or the conference room.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Well, the conference room was where the conferees 
met. Well, I'd say the conference room too. I think we know it didn't 
happen in the Appropriations Committee or the Ways and Means Committee. 
The Banking Committee is still out there. And the reason that the 
Senate Banking Committee is still out there is that the person that 
really came under the harshest scrutiny at the beginning was the 
Senator from Connecticut, Senator Dodd. And I would just suggest, Madam 
Speaker, that he has a vested interest in finding this out just like we 
do, because when you don't know who did it, when you won't help us find 
out who did it and have people come clean, people begin to circulate 
ugly rumors. And I have heard, for instance, that the distinguished 
chairman of the Senate Banking Committee is one of the largest 
recipients of campaign contributions from AIG. Now people will say, oh, 
well, he must have done it because he got campaign cash. Well, I think 
that is unfair to the Senator, quite frankly, and I think that he 
should join with us and let's find out who did it.
  Today, and Madam Speaker, I will submit an additional document from 
the Hartford Courant, if I may, into the Record. And today, this 
article starts with ``No wonder Senator Dodd went wobbly last week when 
asked about his February amendment ratifying hundreds of millions of 
dollars in bonuses to executives at AIG. Dodd has been one of the 
company's favorite recipients,'' so an ugly rumor is out there. But it 
turns out that Senator Dodd's wife also benefited, in that she was 
employed by an AIG subsidiary.

                              {time}  2015

  So, look. I don't know who did it, and I hope that the Senator from 
Connecticut didn't do it, but now people are throwing mud at him and 
are basically saying, you know, to the average Joe Sixpack at home, 
well, of course he did it. You know, he got a bunch of cash from him, 
and his wife used to work for one of their companies, so of course he 
did it. So the Senator should come out and identify--somebody knows who 
did it. That's the problem. So just tell us. Move on. They screwed up. 
Move on.
  Madam Speaker, I'll ask how much time we have left.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman has 10 minutes remaining.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the Speaker.
  Mr. TIBERI. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I'm happy to yield.
  Mr. TIBERI. Clearly, to your point in this exercise, most would point 
the finger at the Senator from Connecticut--
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Right.
  Mr. TIBERI.--which probably means he didn't do it, which probably 
means it's somebody else, because he is the most obvious choice having 
played the game.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Well, taking back my time, I am a big fan of Agatha 
Christie's, and as you read through those books, you're sure it's the 
butler or somebody else, and it's never the butler. So, you know, I 
don't think we can exclude the Senator, but I'm with you. I think, you 
know, when everybody is shooting at the Senator from Connecticut, it's 
probably somebody else.
  Mr. TIBERI. Well, yielding back to me again--and I appreciate that--I 
think what we found in his comments last week in that impromptu press 
conference is that, one day, he said he didn't know anything about it, 
and the next day, he said, ``Well, yes, I did do it, but it was at the 
direction of somebody in the administration.'' Obviously, he doesn't 
want to throw somebody under the bus, but he has already been thrown 
under the bus, so I would hope that we could end this rather quickly 
with: Who is it?
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Right.
  In just taking back my time, what troubles me about this is, the last 
time I checked, the Constitution does not let anybody in the 
administration write a law. So somebody could have suggested it at 
Treasury, said the President wants it, the Secretary wants it, whatever 
the facts are, but the fact of the matter is that nobody at Treasury 
can write legislation. That is the job of the United States Senate and 
of the United States Congress.
  Mr. TIBERI. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Oh, I'm happy to.
  Mr. TIBERI. To your point, I would like to submit this for the Record 
as well. It's a Los Angeles Times article from February.

              [From the Los Angeles Times, Feb. 14, 2009]

Private Talks for Public Stimulus; Obama Has Said He Wants Congress to 
   Work in the Open. But He Isn't Troubled by the Recent Negotiations

                          (By Peter Nicholas)

       Washington.--Upending Washington's entrenched ways of doing 
     business is proving tougher than President Obama may have 
     assumed.
       The nearly $800-billion stimulus bill served as a test 
     case.
       During the campaign, Obama released a position paper 
     stating his commitment to open government. As president, he 
     said, he would not only insist on transparency in his own 
     administration, he would press Congress to revamp its 
     practices as well.
       Obama has no constitutional authority to set rules for 
     Congress, but he suggested he would use his influence to see 
     to it that Congress doesn't conduct its work ``in the dead of 
     night and behind closed doors.''
       In the first major piece of legislation pushed by Obama, 
     transparency was missing.
       Important negotiating sessions devoted to the stimulus took 
     place in congressional offices, outside pubic view. Rep. 
     Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) said he was in a meeting 
     about the stimulus plan Tuesday night in the office of House 
     Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco). Among the 
     participants was White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.
       ``We had to do some hard bargaining,'' Waxman said.
       The abundance of private deliberations made for some 
     comical moments.
       Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.) was walking through the Capitol on 
     Wednesday on his way to a public meeting in which Senators 
     and House members were supposed to hash out differences over 
     the stimulus. As he passed the Rotunda, Camp spotted Senate 
     Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) holding a news conference 
     announcing that a deal had already been struck.
       ``This is the largest spending bill in the history of the 
     United States, and I believe the public business should be 
     done in public,'' said Camp, who had been appointed to the 
     10-member conference committee created to reconcile 
     differences between the two chambers.
       ``President Obama made that commitment repeatedly in his 
     campaign,'' he said.
       Obama aides say that the president is still committed to 
     transparency in government.
       He reiterated the pledge during the transition, posting a 
     promise on his website to ``restore the American people's 
     trust in their government by making government more open and 
     transparent,'' and cited closed conference committee sessions 
     as a practice ripe for overhaul.
       But the White House isn't apologizing for how the stimulus 
     bill was handled. Given the dismal economic climate, White 
     House aides said, the country needed a stimulus bill--fast.
       Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, asked abut the private 
     negotiations, said that Obama wasn't troubled.
       ``He's pleased with the process and the product that has 
     come out,'' Gibbs said while briefing reporters Friday. ``I 
     think when the process is done, the American people will be 
     proud of the product that we believe and we hope will begin 
     to stimulate the economy.''
       Democratic leaders said the bill was handled according to 
     procedures and customs that have been in place for years, 
     including when Republicans controlled Congress.
       Waxman said Congress' treatment of the bill was fairly 
     standard. Could Congress have

[[Page 8468]]

     demanded that all negotiations play out in public? Waxman 
     said that would have been impractical.
       ``There are too many moving parts in this bill,'' Waxman 
     said. ``We would be sitting in an open conference committee 
     meeting for weeks, if not a whole month, to process all the 
     amendments that would have been offered.''

  Again to your point, this says the President has no constitutional 
authority to set rules for Congress, ``but he suggested he would use 
his influence to see to it that Congress doesn't conduct its work `in 
the dead of night and behind closed doors,' '' when in fact, in this 
particular exercise, as we know and as your chart indicates and as the 
Senator from Connecticut has indicated, these words came from the 
administration and were put into the stimulus bill in the dead of 
night. We still don't know who in the administration. We don't know 
everybody who was in the room from the administration, so the 
administration can claim they have nothing to do with Congress.
  Based upon the documents from the press that we have submitted 
tonight and that you have submitted tonight and based upon the shuttle 
diplomacy that occurred during the days before the stimulus vote, there 
were top administration officials involved, in the room, writing the 
bill in the dead of night, with no transparency, no Republicans, no 
press, no C-SPAN, with nobody witnessing what was being done. The 
product you have at the end of the process are these 50 words that 
nobody in America is taking credit for. Your resolution tomorrow will 
begin to get to the bottom of this, unfortunately, if someone does not 
come forward.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Well, taking back my time, I do hope that in the 
markup of the resolution of inquiry tomorrow that we do see 
transparency and bipartisanship. Both Republicans and Democrats on that 
committee want to answer the question as much as we do and as much as, 
I'm sure, Senator Dodd would like to have this cloud lifted from his 
shoulders, and so I hope it moves in that direction.
  I have to tell you I am not optimistic. I mean I will not be 
surprised when I get a telephone call tomorrow that the Financial 
Services Committee has somehow made it impossible for that to see the 
light of day, which it can by a majority vote--they have the votes--and 
we'll see what happens. But you know what? I'm a big fan of Chairman 
Frank's, and he is a fair man, and I think he'll give it fair 
consideration tomorrow. I look forward to that telephone call.
  Mr. Austria, is there anything you want to say before we leave here?
  Mr. AUSTRIA. If you would yield for just a moment.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I would be happy to.
  Mr. AUSTRIA. Let me just say, as a new Member up here from Ohio--I 
mean I served 10 years in the State legislature. I've been here less 
than 100 days. I'm just starting my third month. I have never seen this 
kind of process where bills are rolled out, where language is stuck in 
that we don't have the opportunity to read before we vote on it, and 
where language is put in and no one will take responsibility for that 
language.
  I think the American people out there are looking at this, scratching 
their heads, saying: How can this be? How can it be that language is 
put in a bill, and nobody has an opportunity to read that bill, and 
nobody wants to take responsibility now for that language?
  I appreciate the exercise that the gentleman from Ohio has gone 
through tonight to make the point, and I appreciate your offering that 
resolution. It shouldn't take 14 Republican freshmen to stand up and 
say, ``we want accountability for this dollar,'' and offer legislation 
that we would hope that the administration would stand behind, but it 
doesn't seem to be getting any traction. I hope your resolution moves 
tomorrow because, you know, the American people deserve answers. I 
think you've made some very good points tonight, and I appreciate the 
opportunity to participate with both gentlemen from Ohio.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Well, listen. I thank you.
  Mr. Tiberi, would you like to close?
  Mr. TIBERI. Let me just, again, thank you for your leadership on 
this. I would hope that we don't have to come back next week and add 
pictures and subtract rooms, but I am willing to do that if nothing 
occurs tomorrow. I certainly would not want to be in the majority--a 
Democrat in a competitive district--having to defend a ``no'' vote on 
your resolution tomorrow and a ``yes'' vote on a bill that allowed 
these 47 words to go forward and millions and millions of dollars to 
citizens and noncitizens of a failing company that should go into 
bankruptcy or should be split up into several different companies. This 
is an outrage. Americans are outraged. We will get to the bottom of 
this, and at the end of the day, I predict that we will find out who 
was responsible for that pen.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Well, I thank both gentlemen for participating.
  Madam Speaker, I thank you for your courtesy.
  To reinforce Mr. Tiberi's point, I think Senator Dodd has a vested 
interest in helping us with this because, currently, it looks like 
``Senator Dodd in the conference room with a pen.'' Now, I don't think 
that that is true, so I hope that whoever did this will tell us about 
it.

       Dana, what is happening?
       Dana Bash, CNN Senior Congressional Correspondent: Well, 
     Anderson, as we speak, the White House chief of staff and the 
     president's budget director are inside House Speaker Nancy 
     Pelosi's office.
       And, in fact, they have been here coming up on eight hours 
     straight--eight hours straight--shuttling between the House 
     speaker's office and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's 
     office, trying to urgently broker a compromise between House 
     Democrats and Senate Democrats in order to get the 
     president's stimulus package to--to his desk by this week.
       And I just spoke to a Democratic source who says that, in 
     these talks, they are narrowing their differences.
       (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
       Bash (voice-over): House Democrats are not happy that 
     Senate Democrats cut some $100 billion in spending from their 
     stimulus package, tens of billions slashed from Democratic 
     priorities, like education.
       But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is now signaling, they will 
     likely have to live with it.
       Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Speaker of the House: As 
     President Obama cautioned the nation, that we cannot allow 
     the perfect to be the enemy of the effective and of the 
     necessary. And we will not.
       CQ--
       Late into the Evening * House and Senate Democratic 
     negotiators met in the Speaker's office with White House 
     Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel and White House budget chief 
     Peter Orzsag late into the evening Tuesday, breaking at 9 
     p.m., working intensely to firm up an overall cap for the 
     package and sort through differences.
       ``It's so difficult to talk with a body that is . . . 
     controlled by three people. You have no idea,'' Ways and 
     Means Committee Charles B. Rangel, D-N.Y., said as he left 
     the meeting, noting that the health and spending portions of 
     the bill were proving most difficult to reconcile.
       ``There's no obstacle that's come up that we cannot resolve 
     with a lot of pain,'' he said.
       As Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., 
     left the meeting, he said that $800 billion was the 
     ``ballpark'' limit for the conference report, and that the 
     final figure might come in a little lower than that. Baucus 
     said that getting a deal by the weekend was the goal 
     understood by everyone involved.
                                  ____


              [From www.theleftcoaster.com, Mar. 19, 2009]

                      White House Staff Botched It

       Folks, Geithner, Bernanke, and the Bush Treasury Department 
     knew about the AIG bonuses for months. According to AIG, the 
     payments were OK'd by the White House last Thursday. Why? 
     Because it appears that David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel 
     grossly underestimated how infuriating this would be.
       ``We weren't authorized until Thursday night,'' the AIG 
     executive said. ``We were negotiating with the Treasury and 
     the Federal Reserve. Treasury indicated that they needed it 
     cleared by the White House, as well. We hit the go button for 
     the payments on Friday.''
       For the new administration, the bonuses were a distraction 
     from what senior aides called the main focus: getting the 
     economy working and people back to work. ``People are not 
     sitting around their kitchen tables thinking about AIG,'' 
     Axelrod said. ``They are thinking about their own jobs.''
       Bad decision Dave.
       Their message to the president when the group assembled for 
     their first extended conversation about AIG in the Roosevelt 
     Room

[[Page 8469]]

     on Sunday was not optimistic: They told him they had ``done 
     and will do what we legally can,'' Axelrod said.
       But Obama made clear at that meeting that he was unwilling 
     to throw up his hands. He instructed Geithner and the others 
     to seek legal ways that the government might recover the 
     bonuses. And he made plans to tell the public what he thought 
     the next day.
       That decision ran counter to the belief among some in his 
     inner circle that the bonus issue while an outrage was a 
     small problem compared with the economic issues confronting 
     his young presidency. ``The first and most important job we 
     have is to get this economy moving again,'' Axelrod said. 
     ``As galling as this is, it doesn't go to the main issue.''
       What you see is a fine example of poor decision making 
     clouded by being inside the White House bubble. After 
     spending two years out on the campaign trail ensuring that 
     your message and actions mesh with what people are thinking, 
     Axelrod is now inside the bubble and cannot see that the 
     optics of this fiasco do matter to people, because he assumes 
     naively that people will look beyond it due to an overriding 
     fear of their own situations. He also assumes his boss can 
     talk his way out of anything, when in fact Obama has 
     surrounded himself with two tone deaf lops in Geithner and 
     Summers.
                                  ____


  Dodd's Wife a Former Director of Bermuda-Based IPC Holdings, an AIG 
                           Controlled Company

                           (By Kevin Rennie)

       No wonder Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Conn) went wobbly 
     last week when asked about his February amendment ratifying 
     hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses to executives at 
     insurance giant AIG. Dodd has been one of the company's 
     favorite recipients of campaign contributions. But it turns 
     out that Senator Dodd's wife has also benefited from past 
     connections to AIG as well.
       From 2001-2004, Jackie Clegg Dodd served as an ``outside'' 
     director of IPC Holdings, Ltd., a Bermuda-based company 
     controlled by AIG. IPC, which provides property casualty 
     catastrophe insurance coverage, was formed in 1993 and 
     currently has a market cap of $1.4 billion and trades on the 
     NASDAQ under the ticker symbol IPCR. In 2001, in addition to 
     a public offering 15 million shares of stock that raised $380 
     million, IPC raised more than $109 million through a 
     simultaneous private placement sale of 5.6 million shares of 
     stock to AIG--giving AIG a 20 percent stake in IPC. (AIG sold 
     its
       Clegg was compensated for her duties to the company, which 
     was managed by a subsidiary of AIG. In 2003, according to a 
     proxy statement, Clegg received $12,000 per year and an 
     additional $1,000 for each Directors' and committee meeting 
     she attended. Clegg served on the Audit and Investment 
     committees during her final year on the board.
       IPC paid millions each year to other AIG-related companies 
     for administrative and other services. Clegg was a diligent 
     director. In 2003, the proxy statement report, she attended 
     more than 75 percent of board and committee meetings. This 
     while she served as the managing partner of Clegg 
     International Consultants, LLC, which she created in 2001, 
     the year she joined the board of IPC. (See Dodd's public 
     financial disclosure reports with the Senate from 2001-2004 
     here.)
       Dodd is likely more familiar with the complicated workings 
     of AIG than he was letting on last week. This week may 
     provide him with another opportunity to refresh his 
     recollections.

                          ____________________