Revolutionary War And War Of 1812 Battlefield Protection Act

Floor Speech

Revolutionary War And War Of 1812 Battlefield Protection Act

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Mr. DURBIN. I thank my colleagues from Vermont and Rhode Island for their comments. I certainly support what they have had to say.

When my kids were growing up, my daughter's favorite movie was the ``Wizard of Oz.'' It had that great ending, of course, when this massive wizard who held everyone in thrall, they finally pulled the curtain back, the little doggie did, and there was this gnomish character sitting in front of a microphone. Everybody stepped back and said: All these years that we have been afraid of the great Wizard of Oz, it turns out it is just a little fellow back there.

I wish to thank the bonus babies at AIG. They managed to trip up the curtain and we took a look and saw what was behind it. What was behind it was unvarnished greed. These are people who would not have a job today were it not for the hard-working taxpayers of America putting $160 billion of our tax money into their failed corporate experiment, an experiment that failed and they knew it would, when they went overseas to London and had 300 of their best and brightest dream up a plan to issue insurance policies that couldn't pass muster by the laws and regulations of the United States. Somehow they dreamed it up in London, executed it, and the next thing you knew American taxpayers were holding the bag. It was a big bag; some say $1 trillion or more of liability.

So the time came when Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke called the leaders from the House and Senate into a private meeting last October and said, in a very quiet manner: If we don't do something and move quickly to do it, the American economy could collapse and the rest of the world may follow.

Now, that is the kind of conversation you do not forget around Capitol Hill. I will never forget it. We said: What do you need? They said: We need hundreds of billions of dollars to ride to the rescue of AIG and all these other entities that are teetering on collapse.

So what did we do? Most of us said: We have no choice. If the alternative is to do nothing and watch businesses and families fail, we cannot let it happen. So we gave this authority to the previous administration to try to move in and prop up the economy and get it moving forward again.

Well, about $350 billion later, people said: What happened? Did it solve our problems? No. We are still in a recession. Did it save banks? Perhaps some for another day. But the economy is still struggling. We ended up saying to American taxpayers: Now you will become investors in these teetering and failing financial institutions.

That is what brings us to today. It turns out we own about 79 percent of the value of AIG--once the world's largest insurance company. Now it is subsidized by American taxpayers. Were it not for that subsidy, it would have fallen flat on its face in bankruptcy, as Senator Whitehouse mentioned earlier. In bankruptcy, the sanctity of the contract is set aside. The bankruptcy trustee and judge sit back and decide: What are we going to do with limited assets and dramatically larger liabilities at the end of the day? They rewrite contracts. They basically come to different conclusions.

We saved AIG from that fate as taxpayers, and what reward do we have to show for it? Millions of dollars in bonuses paid to employees who failed, bonus babies at AIG who could not get enough. After $160 billion of taxpayers' money, they wanted their own personal bonuses to take home. As families across America struggle, losing their jobs, losing their homes, watching their savings accounts diminish to virtually nothing, these folks wanted to walk off with a bonus. For good work? No. A bonus for bad work.

So this morning a couple people ventured out to defend them. I could not wait to read those articles. One of them said: These people know where all the bodies are buried. They know the intricacies of these insurance policies. We need them. They know the secret rocket fuel formula. If they leave, someone else may never discover it, and we could lose even more money.

I am not buying it. America should not be held hostage by the bonus babies at AIG. The fact is, what we have seen here is greed at its worst, incompetence rewarded, and people bold enough on the Federal subsidy to want to take a million dollars or more home for a job not well done.

Well, there are several ways we are going to try to send a wake-up call to these bonus babies at AIG. One of them is a provision that Senator Baucus of the Finance Committee has proposed, which is virtually going to impose taxes on them so, at the end of the day, after they pay their tax bill, there is nothing left. After they have paid their Federal and State and local taxes, there will not be anything left of these bonuses.

I do not know if they will have the good sense to realize this was a terrible corporate decision, but we have to send this message loudly and clearly. If America's taxpayers are on the line, then, frankly, these people, who now
work for us and work for this Government, are not entitled to a bonus for their misconduct and incompetence.

(The further remarks of Mr. Durbin pertaining to the introduction of S. 621 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

Mr. DURBIN. I yield the floor.

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