Coming up Sunday on "This Week": Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and VP's chief economist Jared Bernstein.
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ABC'S "THIS WEEK WITH GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS"
MARCH 22, 2009
SPEAKERS: GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, HOST
JARED BERNSTEIN, CHIEF ECONOMIST TO VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN
SEN. KENT CONRAD, D-N.D.
SEN. SUSAN COLLINS, R-MAINE
REP. MIKE PENCE, R-IND.
[*] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEPHANOPOULOS: Good morning, and welcome to "This Week."
Bonus anger boils over.
(UNKNOWN): Arrogance, incompetence and greed.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Washington responds.
(UNKNOWN): The people have said, "No." In fact, they've said, "Hell no."
(UNKNOWN): The only way to get their money back is to tax it back.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: They've got a bomb strapped to them. You don't want them to blow up.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Did AIG and the banks get what they deserve or has Congress gone too far? What does the bonus battle mean for Obama's budget, the treasury secretary, and his new bank plan? Questions for top players from the House, the Senate, and the White House, our "This Week" debate.
Then, the president hits Leno's couch and ESPN, but should he have stayed home? That and all the week's politics on our roundtable with George Will, Donna Brazile, Robert Reich, and ABC's business correspondent Betsy Stark.
And, as always, the Sunday funnies.
COLBERT: Let's go get AIG!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: From the heart of the nation's capital, "This Week" with ABC News chief Washington correspondent George Stephanopoulos, live from the Newseum on Pennsylvania Avenue.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Hello again.
Well, you can sum up Washington's agenda this week in just two words: anger management. The key question: how to deal with the rage unleashed by those AIG bonuses without undermining the broader effort to fix our financial system.
To debate what's been done and what comes next, we're joined this morning by Republican Senator Susan Collins, a key member of the Senate Appropriations Committee; Congressman Mike Pence, the chairman of the House Republican Conference; from the White House, Jared Bernstein, chief economist to Vice President Biden; and the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Kent Conrad.
Welcome to all of you. And let's begin with those AIG bonuses.
Senator Conrad, the House passed a 90 percent excise tax on any firm that got more than $100 billion bonuses to any firms getting more than $5 billion from the federal government. Will the Senate pass a similar excise tax?
CONRAD: The simple answer is, "I don't know."
STEPHANOPOULOS: Will you vote for one?
CONRAD: I've got my doubts whether that's the best way to do this. I think there are certain constitutional questions about the imposition of a tax on a limited group of people. But, look, I don't think there's any question we've got to try to do everything we can to get the bonuses back.
You know, if -- if I were in charge of AIG, I'd call in these folks and I'd say, "Look, you either give them back or you're fired." That we can do, because we own the company.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But the government doesn't yet have the ability -- the treasury secretary is seeking it -- to get the resolution authority. But right now, they say -- the White House says the government doesn't have that ability.
CONRAD: I'll tell you who does have the ability, is the man who's running AIG. He is in charge of the company. He could call in those people and say, "Look, you either give it back or you're going to be fired."
There's no way you can justify, when the federal government is putting up $170 billion to rescue that company, that folks who were involved in creating this mess get $165 million in bonuses.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Collins, your Maine colleague, Senator Snowe, said she'd prefer to wipe out any bonuses to any financial institution receiving government money. Do you agree?
COLLINS: Well, first of all, all of us are angry that this happened in the first place. And it could have been prevented. It isn't just the head of AIG. The treasury secretary could have made as a condition of receiving the money a requirement that would have prohibited these bonuses.
But as angry as I am, I agree with my colleague that we need to be careful. And the problem with the Senate bill is it is so wide in its scope that it would apply to tens of thousands of employees all across this country who had nothing to do with getting us in this mess.
STEPHANOPOULOS: That's the Senate excise tax proposal, which is only a 35 percent tax, but it would apply to a far broader number of companies.
COLLINS: Right.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So you're against both the House and the Senate excise tax?
COLLINS: I'm not against getting the money back. In fact, I feel very strongly that we do need to recoup the money. I'm just not certain that either the House-passed bill nor the Senate bill are the best approach.
We need to look for an alternative means of recouping this money that doesn't cause further harm to our economy as we're trying to get banks lending.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But is there one? Is there another means? I mean, that's the question.
COLLINS: Yes. As Kent Conrad said, I think there are other approaches. We can have the treasury secretary put more heat on AIG. He never should have allowed this to occur in the first place.
We can make sure that there is pressure for people to voluntarily get the money back or else they're going to lose their jobs or there's going to be no further funding for AIG.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Some of that has started to happen. You voted against the House excise tax, correct?
PENCE: I did, George. And, you know, I -- I opposed the Wall Street bailout from the beginning, like most House Republicans. And the truth is, House Republicans share the outrage of the American people over the idea that we would use taxpayer bailout money for executive bonuses.
But, you know, the real answer here, the real option I'll share with my two Senate colleagues, what we ought to say is to AIG, we ought to say, "No more bailout money until AIG recovers all of the more than $200 million that's been distributed in executive bonuses."
What's the Democrats brought to the floor this week was really a constitutionally questionable bill that was really nothing more than a transparent attempt to divert attention away from the fact that, because of Democrats in Congress and the administration, these bonuses were able to be distributed to begin with.
There was language in the bill that was authored by the senator from Oregon and Senator Snowe that would have prevented these bonuses from going forward. And that language was removed, we're told at -- at the urging of the administration.
And I -- you know, this week's -- this week's effort was really a -- you know, it was a -- it was a disappointing spectacle, and it was -- it was mostly driven by the fact that Democrats are trying desperately to draw attention away from the fact that they made these bonuses possible.
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