Fox Business on the case:
While the Senate was constructing the $787 billion stimulus last month, Dodd added an executive-compensation restriction to the bill. That amendment provides an "exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009" -- which exempts the very AIG bonuses Dodd and others are now seeking to tax.
Of course, this is going all over the conservative blogosphere.
Yet the actual text of Dodd's amendment concerning executive compensation doesn't have this February 11th exception in the text.
So the question is right now, where did the exception come from?
It may yet have come from Dodd, but Fox Business did not source its assertion that this language came from Dodd. I'll keep looking into this.
Update #1: The bill passed the Senate on February 10, 2009. So I'm expecting the February 11 date to have more to do with that passage than any boondoggle for AIG.
Update #2: The amendment as described by Dodd at his website doesn't include this February 11 language either, but it wouldn't. Again, the amendment he submitted and that was passed (Amendment 354 to H.R.1 and Amendment 98) didn't have that language in there.
I do see, however, that Amendment 98 was withdrawn. Perhaps that will tell where the language eventually showed up.
Update #3: The bill passed the Senate on February 10th. It did so as a substitute amendment (570) to the original bill, submitted by Susan Collins. That means that the amendment calls for everything in the actual bill to be struck out and the text of the amendment inserted. It was this bill that passed the Senate on February 10th.
The exception for bonuses before February 11th, 2009 is NOT THERE. Senator Dodd's section on executive compensation is there.
Update #4: Accordingly, I changed the title to be more definitive.
That means this language was inserted during the reconciliation process. But Senator Dodd did not insert this language up to this point.
Update #5: FWDude below finds the names of the conferees for me. From the House: Obey, Rangel, Waxman, Lewis (CA), and Camp. From the Senate: Inouye; Baucus; Reid; Cochran; Grassley.
Dodd's name is conspicuously absent. And the text grandfathering in bonuses made before the date of the House-Senate conference (February 11, 2009) is in the conference report. So this is the group that put that in. There is no indication whatsoever that Chris Dodd had anything to do with this clause. Once again, Fox News is pumping out a malicious smear based on shoddy research, and people like Michelle Malkin are pumping it mercilessly.
Consider this right wing lie debunked.
Update #6: A more concise version of this information is cross-posted at the Smirking Chimp.
Update #7: Another diarist points out that it's not Dodd but a group of top Democrats from the House and the Senate doing this. Not so. There were four Republicans among the conferees -- Charles Grassley, Thad Cochran, Jerry Lewis, and Dave Camp. We have no information on who insisted on this language.
I'm happy to let the fault lie where it belongs, but there's no reason but rank partisanship right now to say it was a Democrat, and an outright lie to say it was Chris Dodd.