This just in: Damn the Consitution
03/19/09
This just dropped into my inbox:
POLITICO Breaking News:
The House has approved a bill to impose a 90 percent tax AIG bonuses on a 328-93 vote.
Not that I doubted Congress' willingness to outwardly flaunt the Constitution to this point, but here's the language of Section 1, Article 9 of the US Constitution that expressly prohibits this kind of action:
No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
Again, not that a fancied this Congress to be all that bullish on following the Constitution. I guess I shouldn't find this all that surprising.
Perhaps if Congress and the Obama Administration didn't want something like this to occurr, they should have spoken to Sen. Chris Dodd (D-AIG) when he put in the language to protect these bonuses.
And I'd like to once again reiterate that the source of this entire consternation represents not even one tenth of one percent of the AIG bailout. There are plenty of much more worthwhile things about the AIG debacle over which to get our righteously indignant panties in a bunch.
This is moronic AND unconstitutional. We're letting populist outrage to rule the day, which is certainly a sure path to disaster.
Congress should be ashamed of themselves. And they went and did this.
UPDATE: From the AP story on the unconstitutional, ex post facto AIG bonuses tax:
Said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: "We want our money back and we want our money back now for the taxpayers."
Yes, Madame Speaker. If you want to work on reclaiming the whole $180 billion of this debacle of a bailout, I'd be forced into the awkward position of having to agree with you. Let what happens to AIG happen to AIG.
But - I will again reiterate - this whole hubub about these bonuses is absolutely a red herring.