Gerlach: AIG Should Repay Taxpayers First

Congressman Jim Gerlach (PA-6th District) said today he shares his constituents' outrage over reports that American Insurance Group (AIG) executives will collect $165 million in bonuses just months after taking billions in government handouts to stay afloat.

From a statement issued by Gerlach's office:

"The only big checks this company should be writing are ones payable to the hard-working American taxpayers. Wall Street executives cannot continue grabbing billion-dollar life preservers with one hand and huge bonus checks with the other. AIG is a firm that took $170 billion from the Treasury to keep its doors open and then lost $61.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008. Understandably, my constituents cannot figure out how a performance like that warrants bonuses."

Gerlach voted in January to stop bureaucrats at the Treasury Department from handing out $350 billion of taxpayer money under the second phase of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the same program that paid AIG $170 billion.