AIG Bonus Tax

There has been such an emotional uproar over the AIG bonuses that many have overlooked some common sense with regards to how to handle these sorts of things - or even if they SHOULD be 'handled'.....

I feel as much outrage over how this whole thing happened, as do many. The fact that I paid those bonuses, through my taxpayer-funded AIG bail-out, really pisses me off. It's not right. And the insistence by the AIG CEO that due to 'contractual obligations', they had to pay the bonuses. Of course, the UAW had a contract but re-opened it to renegoitiation. But Congress caused the issue by not putting any - or very many - strings on the money they gave AIG, at Bush's insistence. So now they are outraged at the bonuses being paid, although the writing was on the wall for months, and many people knew about them.

But the position they are taking - with a 90% tax on these bonuses - seems to me a large overreaction, which is what we should expect from Congress. It's a very slippery slope they are stepping on to, and it makes me very nervous. If they can retroactively tax these bonuses, what's to stop them from enacting any sort of retroactive tax? Or a tax targeted at a very narrow group of citizens? Should they really be allowed to dictate the compensation policies of companies? Granted, in this instance, they (we) own 80% of AIG - but shouldn't they have to work through the same stockholder procedures that any stockholder would have to?

This is one instance where I agree with President Obama (who has indicated that he is against the bonus tax). I hope he has the guts to stick with his position this time.