Anger over AIG bonuses turns partisan

Have the recipients of these checks no shame at all? Pomeroy continued. Summing up his personal view of the so-far anonymous AIG executives,he said: You are disgraced professional losers. And by the way,give us our money back.

Representative Barney Frank,the Massachusetts Democrat who heads the House Financial Services Committee and has been among AIGs fiercest critics,spoke contemptuously of the bonus recipients as people who had to be bribed not to abandon the company they had nearly ruined.

Republicans were not to be outdone in expressing disgust,and they had a collective I told you so message for Democrats. Representative Ed Royce of California,for instance,said he would vote for the bill on the floor,but he proudly recalled that last fall he had voted against the Troubled Assets Relief Program,the bailout plan that is the source of mounting public fury.

Other Republicans signaled that they would vote no and would line up instead behind a countermeasure that Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio,the minority leader,said would recover the taxpayers money much faster.