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WASHINGTON – Today Rep. Leonard Lance (NJ-7) joined Republican Freshmen members of Congress at a Capitol Hill news conference to announce legislation they are introducing to direct the U.S. Treasury Department to recoup the payment of American International Group Inc. (AIG) bonuses within two weeks.

Lance, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, said he was outraged with news reports that AIG will pay $165 million in executive bonuses.

“I am outraged by the massive bonus payments announced by AIG,” Lance said at the news conference. “My phone has literally not stopped ringing with public anger. Secretary Geithner has got to put in place a strong action plan to stop AIG executives from receiving millions in bonuses while taxpayers continue to bail out the company. This legislation is a first step toward protecting the U.S. taxpayers from bad actors like AIG.”

Lance said the legislation would essentially do three things:

• Direct Treasury to implement a plan to recoup within the next two weeks the payment of AIG bonuses.
• Require any future bonus payments, of any kind, to Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) recipients, to be approved in advance by Treasury.
• Any future contractual obligations entered into by TARP fund recipients to make bonus payments of any kind must be approved in advance by Treasury.

Yesterday, Lance urged Treasury Secretary Geithner to examine immediately all legal options to recover taxpayer funds from companies like AIG that have abused the privilege of taxpayer assistance and to consider all options available that would block AIG executive bonuses. The Lance letter to Secretary Geithner can be found at lance.house.gov.


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