From The Progress Report:
CONGRESS -- MORE LAWMAKERS WHO OPPOSED SALARY CAPS LAST MONTH ARE NOW ATTACKING AIG BONUSES: As The Progress Report noted earlier this week, Republicans who opposed Wall Street salary caps -- such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Senate Banking Committee ranking member Richard Shelby (R-AL) -- are now flipping their positions to condemn the bonuses paid by AIG. This week, McConnell made the rounds on cable television to misleadingly suggest that he has always favored salary caps. Rep. Peter King (R-NY), Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO), and Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) are also now joining in the hypocrisy. Inhofe, for example, said this week, "The AIG situation is clear evidence of what happens when you shovel money out the door with no strings attached and no transparency." While Inhofe today demands that federal bailouts come with "strings attached," he expressed the opposite view in February when he asked, "[I]s this still America? Do we really tell people how to run [a business], and who to pay and how much to pay?" Similarly, former Speaker Newt Gingrich yesterday penned an op-ed venting his "outrage" at the "fat bonuses" paid to staffers at AIG. However in November, Gingrich scoffed at the idea of capping salaries specifically at AIG, remarking, "You have a level of micromanagement of AIG and others. You can't apply Washington bureaucratic rules to a free market company without ultimately destroying the company."