Chuck Schumer Warns AIG Bonus Recipients

Chuck Schumer, on the floor of the Senate, is talking like a street thug.

VIDEO.

His colleagues are joining him in demanding that legal contracts be disregarded. They are promising that bonuses protected under the law, thanks to an amendment added by Chris Dodd to the recently passed stimulus bill, will be stripped from their recipients.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Democrats vowed Tuesday to all but strip AIG executives of their $165 million in bonuses, as expressions of outrage swelled in Congress over eye-catching extra income for employees of a firm that has received billions in taxpayer bailout funds.

"Recipients of these bonuses will not be able to keep all of their money," declared Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in an unusually strong threat delivered on the Senate floor.

"If you don't return it on your own we will do it for you," said Chuck Schumer of New York.

The bonuses were paid legally, part of a program that had been disclosed in advance in filings that American International Group Inc. made with the government.

Senate Democrats threatened to tax the bonuses at up to 91 percent through narrowly written legislation, said Schumer, if AIG does not return the money voluntarily. Republicans have said President Barack Obama should have done more to prevent the executives from accepting the bonuses in the first place.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus asked, "What is the highest excise tax we can impose that will stand up in court? Let's find out what it is."

In the House, Reps. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., and Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, introduced a bill that would that would tax at 100 percent bonuses above $100,000 paid by companies that have received federal bailout money.

...New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said he has issued subpoenas for the names of AIG employees given bonuses despite their possible roles in its near-collapse. Cuomo said his office will investigate whether the bonus payments are fraudulent under state law because they were promised when the company knew it wouldn't have the money to cover them. AIG reported this month that it lost $61.7 billion in the fourth quarter of last year, the largest corporate loss in history, and it has benefited from more than $170 billion in a federal rescue.

This is ridiculous. It's a witch hunt.

Are the salaries that members of Congress accept fraudulent because the government doesn't have the money to cover them?

These people need to take a deep cleansing breath and think about what they're saying.

These threats, this thug mentality, is disturbing.

More from Schumer, USA Today:

Congress began a push Tuesday to get back some of the $165 million that insurance giant AIG paid to executives who drove the company into financial ruin before it was rescued by a government bailout.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee will issue a proposal in the next day or so that would require American International Group to return to the government at least a portion of the bonuses paid out last week. And Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., proposed legislation Tuesday.

"This is disgraceful, this is unacceptable and this is an offense to millions of hard working Americans whose tax dollars are the only reason AIG continues to exist," Schumer, speaking on the Senate floor, said of the bonuses. "We intend to do everything in our power to prevent those payments from being paid and recoup the money that has already been paid."

Schumer said he wrote a letter to AIG chief Edward Liddy urging him to tell his employees to voluntarily return the bonus money. Otherwise, Schumer said, Congress will pass legislation that would tax the bonus money at such a high rate that the AIG employees will be forced to pay it back through taxes.

"If you don't return it on your own we will do it for you," Schumer said.

Thug.

Here's more from Thug Schumer:

"If Mr. Liddy does nothing we will act and we will take this money back and return it to its rightful owners the taxpayers," Schumer warned. "So for those of you who are getting these bonuses, be forewarned -- you will not be getting to keep them."

We should all be "forewarned."

What the Dems giveth, the Dems taketh away.