UPDATE: Just in case the point wasn't yet crystal clear, here is a Think Progress report from February 15, 2009, reporting on the White House/Dodd dispute over the executive compensation provisions. Is there any doubt which party was the one demanding weaker and narrower executive compensation limits? (hint: it wasn't Dodd):
Having the White House blame Dodd (rather than itself) for this exemption is such a gross offense to the truth.
UPDATE II: Rather oddly, the NYT article I quoted above, by David Herzsenhorn, has been moved on the NYT site and is now at this link (see here). Most importantly, it has been re-written to reflect that fact that it was not Dodd who inserted the exception for past contracts:
But Mr. Reid mostly ducked a question about whether Democrats had missed an opportunity to prevent the bonuses because of a clause in the stimulus bill, that imposed limits on executive compensation and bonuses but made an exception for pre-existing employment contracts.
Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, who initially proposed adding executive compensation and bonus limits to the stimulus bill, did not include the exception.
In the place of the Herzsenorn article is now this article by Jackie Calmes and Louise Story that also includes the Dodd version of events:
Mr. Geithner reiterated the Treasury position of that lawyers inside and out of government had agreed that “it would be legally difficult to prevent these contractually mandated payments.”
That position was being questioned at the Capitol. Congressional Republicans, eager to implicate Democrats, initially blamed Senator Christopher J. Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who heads the banking committee, for adding to the economic recovery package an amendment that cracked down on bonuses at companies getting bailout money, but that exempted bonuses protected by contracts, like A.I.G.’s.
Mr. Dodd, in turn, responded Tuesday with a statement saying that the exemption actually had been inserted at the insistence of Treasury during Congress’s final legislative negotiations.
Something in the last couple of hours caused The New York Times to change the way it is reporting this matter so that it is no longer mindlessly reciting the false White House attempt to blame Dodd for the bonus exemption, but instead is at least including a version of the truth.
UPDATE III: I'm receiving email regarding the remarks Dodd made today on CNN in which he stated that, at the White House's insistence and over his objections, he agreed to include the pre-February, 2009 carve-out in the stimulus bill. Some of these emailers have suggested that Dodd's comments are at odds with what I wrote. They quite plainly are not.
The narrative I wrote here (and which Hamsher wrote in her post) both included exactly that sequence:
That was the exact provision that Geithner and Summers demanded and that Dodd opposed. And even after Dodd finally gave in to Treasury's demands, he continued to support an amendment from Ron Wyden and Olympia Snowe to impose fines on bailout-receiving companies which paid executive bonuses."
I explicitly wrote that it was Dodd who, after arguing vehemently against this provision, ultimately agreed to its inclusion. And the statement from Dodd's office that I quoted above included the same series of events ("Because of negotiations with the Treasury Department and the bill Conferees, several modifications were made, including adding the exemption"). That's exactly what Dodd said today on CNN.
The point was -- and is -- that Dodd was pressured to put that carve-out in at the insistence of Treasury officials (whose opposition meant that Dodd's two choices were the limited compensation restriction favored by Geithner/Summers or no compensation limits at all), and Dodd did so only after arguing in public against it. To blame Dodd for provisions that the White House demanded is dishonest in the extreme, and what Dodd said today on CNN about the White House's advocacy of this provision confirms, not contradicts, what I wrote.
UPDATE IV: From the CNN article on the Dodd interview:
Dodd acknowledged his role in the change after a Treasury Department official told CNN the administration pushed for the language.
Both Dodd and the official, who asked not to be named, said it was because administration officials were afraid the government would face numerous lawsuits without the new language. . . .
I agreed reluctantly," Dodd said. "I was changing the amendment because others were insistent."
It was the Treasury Department -- at least according to a Treasury official granted anonymity for the extremely compelling reason that he "asked not to be named" -- that pushed for the carve-out, and did so over Dodd's objections. That was the point from the beginning. That's precisely what made it so outrageous that the administration was trying to blame Dodd for a provision which Obama's own Treasury officials advocated, pushed for and engineered.
Anyone who doubts Dodd's opposition should just go read the above-excerpted articles which reported contemporaneously about the dispute Dodd was having with the White House over the scope of the compensation limits. For obvious reasons, those real-time accounts are far more instructive about what really happened than what the parties are saying now that everyone is trying desperately to avoid blame for the politically toxic AIG bonus payments.
-- Glenn Greenwald
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/