Had President Obama not signed the bill, AIG executives wouldn't be getting $165 million in bonuses funded by American taxpayers.
So says House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH-08). But like his tan, that's not actually true.
In fact, Boehner has it 100% backwards.
Boehner and his Republicans were hoping to find cover for defying the overwhelming mandate for a clawback while still paying fealty to Boss Limbaugh, who opposed the bill. In need of an excuse for voting against it, Republicans had hoped to sell the notion that we were only in this mess because the stimulus bill contained an exception for bonuses paid pursuant to contracts pre-dating the bill's enactment.
That, of course, ignores the fact that there was a solution to the problem sitting right in front of them but that they were refusing to vote for. It's always interesting to note how we got into certain messes (unless the mess is the occupation of Iraq and/or the Bush "administration's" various shreddings of the Constitution, in which case doing so is a backward-looking distraction from the challenges of the future). But there are no better circumstances under which to conduct that investigation than ones in which the problem has already been fixed. Yet, Boss Limbaugh's edict prevented Republicans from agreeing to help with that fix.
But once the rank-and-file realized the ship was going down and bolted for the lifeboats -- with First Mate Eric "Not Eddie" Cantor (R-VA-07) at the head of the pack -- Boehner needed to step up his game. Admitting the truth, of course, was out of the question. So the only option left was to stretch the logical contortions they'd already offered up earlier in their efforts to try to draw Republican votes away from public opinion and back into Boss Limbaugh's orbit.
So that's when Boehner decided to lie.
Had President Obama not signed the bill, AIG executives wouldn't be getting $165 million in bonuses funded by American taxpayers.
The kernel of truth that sometimes lives at the heart of most such lies is this: there was in fact a provision in the bill that exempted bonuses paid pursuant to contracts pre-dating the bill.
But Boehner's mistake is in the answer to this question: what did that provision give an exemption from? In order for Boehner's claim to be true, the exemption had to be from a provision of law that, but for Dodd's change, would have prevented the payment of these bonuses.
And was there such a provision of law? Not yet there wasn't. Because the provision Boehner's claim depended on was in the stimulus bill. Had President Obama not signed the bill, not only would AIG executives in fact be getting $165 million in bonuses funded by American taxpayers, but there would also be no restrictions on any bonuses paid by TARP recipients going forward.
John Boehner does not understand how law actually works. But then again, as he's said, that's not actually his job.