“A half truth, masquerading as a whole truth, is a totally false truth.”
                                                  - Anonymous

The Sherlocks over at the GOP are laying claim to having solved the mystery of the language in the stimulus bill that allowed $165 million in bonus checks to be paid to executives of the AIG Financial Products Division out of the bailout funds provided to AIG by the American taxpayers.  According to Wolf Blitzer in a video placed on the GOP website on Friday, “The mystery has now been resolved.”  Apparently, the resolution lies in President Obama’s statement, “Listen, I’ll take responsibility, I’m the President.  It’s my job to make sure that we fix these messes, even if I don’t make them.”

On Thursday, John Boehner (R-OH), the House Minority Leader, attempted to lay the blame at the President’s feet by stating, “…had President Obama not signed the bill, AIG executives wouldn’t be getting $165 million in bonuses funded by American taxpayers.”

But Boehner and the rest of the GOP are way off track.  As is the case with most lies, this one is built on just a kernel of truth, which is then embellished and twisted to fit the agenda of the liar.  The kernel of truth in this case is that there is, in fact, a provision in the stimulus bill that exempts bonuses paid pursuant to contracts pre-dating the bill.  Since the contracts under which the bonuses were paid were in place when the stimulus bill was signed into law, AIG was, legally, within its rights to pay the bonuses.

Now, the GOP would have us believe that it is solely the fault of the Obama Administration that the bonuses were paid, because the stimulus bill allowed them.  The truth is that had President Obama not signed the bill, not only would AIG executives in fact be getting $165 million in bonuses funded by American taxpayers, under the terms of the original TARP there would also be no restrictions on any bonuses paid by TARP recipients going forward.

Aside from the fact that Boehner is misinformed, lying or just plain stupid (or all three), there are three very important things to remember here:

1. John Boehner and a substantial portion of the GOP caucus supported the original TARP legislation, which was signed into law by President Bush, not President Obama.  That original legislation was fully supported by Boehner and many of his GOP cronies, and so it is they, not the Obama Administration, who permitted AIG to make these bonus payments.
2. The stimulus bill included new executive pay restrictions that were not in the original TARP.  John Boehner and virtually every other Republican voted against the stimulus bill; therefore they voted against the new executive pay restrictions that were not in the original TARP legislation.
3. It is true that the stimulus bill failed to impose new restrictions that would have blocked the AIG bonuses.  But the stimulus bill did not create a new loophole allowing the AIG bonuses — the bonuses were already legal.

The stimulus bill should have gone further.  But it didn’t.  And when they opposed the bill, not a single Republican Representative or Senator complained about that aspect of the bill.  So, when Republicans act like they’ve now solved the mystery that’s going to propel them back to power, we need to keep in mind that this “issue” is mostly fiction – another stream of political propoganda propelled by the GOP’s willful distortion and misrepresentation of the facts.

Mistakes were made all around — by both the Obama Administration and by both parties in Congress.  But using the AIG bonuses for political gains does nothing the help the country.  In the long run, $165 million is a drop in the stimulus bucket.  Both the Administration and both parties in Congress need to focus on what people ultimately care about: getting our economy back on track.

There’s plenty of blame to go around, but pointing fingers isn’t going to get the job done.