Well Halle-freaking-lujah! At least Obama is smart enough to realize that HR 1586 -- legislation passed this week by the House to tax AIG bonuses at 90% -- is unconstitutional!
It's a miracle! Obama and I agree on something! I called this unconstitutional the day it passed!
Hopefully this bill dies in the Senate and if not, let Obama live up to his words and veto this stupidity and arrogance.
Seriously, I'm surprised and impressed that Obama said this.
The comments below are around the 1:40 mark.
From 60 Minutes/CBS News:
"I mean you're a constitutional law professor," Kroft remarked. "You think this bill's constitutional?"
"Well, I think that as a general proposition, you don't wanna be passing laws that are just targeting a handful of individuals. You wanna pass laws that have some broad applicability. And as a general proposition, I think you certainly don't wanna use the tax code to punish people," the president replied. "I think that you've got an pretty egregious situation here that people are understandably upset about. And so let's see if there are ways of doing this that are both legal, that are constitutional, that upholds our basic principles of fairness, but don't hamper us from getting the banking system back on track."
"You've got a piece of legislation that could affect tens of thousands of people. Some of these people probably had nothing to do with the financial crisis. And some of them probably deserve the bonuses that they got," Kroft said. "I mean is that fair?"
"Well, that's why we're gonna have to take a look at this legislation carefully. Clearly, the AIG folks gettin' those bonuses didn't make sense. And one of the things that I have to do is to communicate to Wall Street that, given the current crisis that we're in, they can't expect help from taxpayers but they enjoy all the benefits that they enjoyed before the crisis happened. You get a sense that, in some institutions, that has not sunk in; that you can't go back to the old way of doing business, certainly not on the taxpayers' dime," Obama said. "Now the flip side is that Main Street has to understand, unless we get
these banks moving again, then we can't get this economy to recover. And we don't wanna cut off our nose to spite our face."
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