Thursday, January 21, 2010

Give Back Your Bonuses, Mr. President

I'm sitting here on my couch watching President Obama ranting about bonuses and high pay that individuals in our financial institutions are receiving. In our time of financial crisis, he finds it outrageous that individuals can be paid so much, and that there needs to be additional fees and regulations on these financial institutions, in order to get them to pay back their bailout money or as a simple penalty for their "financial irresponsibility" and "recklessness with taxpayer money." Ok, Mr. President, so why don't we start with YOU and all the money you received in what could be called a "bonus" in the form of a campaign contribution from these financial institutions?

The following are ONLY the top 20 contributors to Obama's campaign...I denoted the financial institutions with red arrows (courtesy of OpenSecrets.org):



According to my math, in ONLY his top 20 contributors, Obama received $3,449,317 from the financial institutions he now criticizes for paying (in his opinion) exuberant amounts to individual CEO's.

Why don't you pay your campaign contributions back to these institutions, Mr. President? I guarantee you the new CEO's of these companies are doing more to help their businesses survive than you are.

*Note: These were donations by the organizations' political action committees (PACs) rather than the institutions themselves. This is a loophole in campaign finance laws that allows corporations to donate to political campaigns, as they themselves cannot. It's essentially a political funnel. PACs can donate, corporations cannot. But ultimately it IS their money.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks like they got rid of the loophole by striking down the law on corporate donations:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/01/21/supreme-court-sides-hillary-movie-filmmakers-campaign-money-dispute/

Doesn't change your post because it used to be a loophole until the Supreme court got rid of the law.

Brandon said...

True! But I don't think PACs will go anywhere, although I'd have to read the court opinion.

Individuals are still limited to contributing $4000 per year to a specific campaign, so PACs will still allow wealthy individuals to contribute above and beyond that $4000 limit.