Senate channels "Not Me"
By Bill Allison Mar 18 2009 5:05 p.m. 5 commentsMaybe we should make members pass a quiz on the contents of bills before they're allowed to vote. Case in point: the bonus exemption in the Stimulus Bill that AIG executives took advantage of. Where it came from and how it got into the bill is a mystery:
In an interview with CNN, Dodd denied inserting that exemption at the 11th hour, and insisted he doesn't know how it got there."When I wrote the language there was no such language like that," Dodd told CNN Tuesday.
Multiple Senate Democratic leadership sources also deny knowing how the exemption got into the bill.
Maybe he did it! And maybe members should have Read the Bill
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Yep--they should have. Check out how little time the stimulus bill was publicly available before debate--13 long hours: http://readthebill.org/cases/stimulus/.Perhaps this provision would've been ferreted out if there had been time to read the bill.
From the FireDogLake article and from this one from Glen Greenwald, it's pretty clear that Dodd's original language did not include the objectionable provision.From the contemporaneous reporting on the stimulus, we learn that the Obama administration was fiercely opposed to Dodd's amendment, which was approved by voice vote, and sought to water it down in conference, which Dodd would not be privy to, as he was not a conferee. The origin of this provision is likely, as Jane Hamsher points out, Geithner and the Obama economic team. Considering that Geithner and Summers were fiercely opposed to enacting retroactive caps on compensation and bonuses. Dodd included retroactive caps in his original amendment. Who took part in conference negotiations? Geithner and Obama team. Dodd wasn't a conferee. Now perhaps anyone could have put it in, but through my deductive powers it seems as though one group was in favor of retroactivity (Dodd) and one was opposed (Obama, et al). The opposition won.Still a great case for reading the actual bill. And having more transparent conference committees.
Agreed that it's probably Geithner who inserted it, but why are senior members so reluctant to say so? No accountability. Stuff just appears in bills. It really is "Not Me" running the government...at least when something unpopular happens.
That is true. But maybe people should be asking the actual conferees and not the person who got their amendment neutered. Of course, if they all had time to read the bill then we may have gotten an answer earlier (not that we have an answer now).
These House and Senate members have large staffs. They could assign pages to each to read to ferret out the questionable items. This is what they are being paid for, isn't it.