What They’re Saying About Taxing Bailout-Company Bonuses

The House moved fast to act on Americans’ outrage at the bonuses paid to executives of American International Group (AIG). Here’s a look around the Web at how that’s playing.

The New York Times describes how executives of AIG are being treated as toxic. Private security guards have been stationed outside their houses, and sometimes the local police drive by. A.I.G. employees at the company’s office tower in Lower Manhattan were told to avoid leaving the building while a demonstration was going on outside. The memo also advised them to avoid displaying company-issued ID cards when they left the office and to abandon tote bags or other items with the A.I.G. logo.

At the Chicago Tribune, columnist David Greising says Congress shouldn’t confuse pandering with policymaking. “This sort of disruptive micro-meddling is exactly what goes wrong when government gets too involved in the economy,” he writes. “The House action is the public-policy equivalent of removing a sliver with a monkey wrench.”

A New York Daily News editorial says, “Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats matched the gross excess of the AIG insiders who stood to gain $165 million in bonuses by ramming through a bill that would virtually eliminate bonuses in banks taking substantial federal bailout money.”

The Wall Street Journal’s coverage includes this commentary: “Congressional anger over AIG’s bonuses foreshadows the battle looming if and when the administration asks for more financial-sector rescue funds. The administration may rightly sense that failing to join hands with Congress and the public in outrage over the bonuses would complicate release of those funds. But Mr. Obama does not need to show solidarity by diminishing confidence in the rule of law. That bit of populism will cost the president far more in future credibility than he stands to gain in present popularity.”

The Washington Post sees fallout hitting the White House, writing: President Obama’s apparent inability to block executive bonuses at insurance giant AIG has dealt a sharp blow to his young administration and is threatening to derail both public and congressional support for his ambitious political agenda.

And the Daily Beast illustrates the populist rage in its “Big Fat Story” of the day,