All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

Politics Today is CBSNews.com's inside look at the key stories driving the day in politics, written by CBS News Political Director Steve Chaggaris:

** Use of leftover bailout funds may be limited by budget rules...

** A set of compromises to replace the public option?...

** Gates says we're in it to "win" it in Afghanistan...

JOBS AND THE ECONOMY: President Obama is set to deliver a speech on the economy today at 11:15am ET at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., where, according to a White House official, he "will announce three key priorities for targeted investment—including a series of steps to help small businesses grow and hire new staff, an additional investment in infrastructure to continue modernizing our highways and railways, bridges and tunnels, airports and seaports and a new program to provide rebates for consumers who retrofit their homes to become more energy efficient.

"We don’t think there is on silver bullet, one plan, one speech or a singular piece of legislation that alone will solve double digit unemployment," the official adds. "And the President’s speech does not represent the totality of our plans for continued economic recovery."

"Obama plans to talk about what he wants to see in the coming weeks and months — chiefly, more Americans in the workplace and fewer on unemployment, which now stands at 10 percent," adds the Associated Press' Philip Elliott. "The White House worked around the clock in recent days to pull together the president's speech."

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White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters today that President Obama will likely back using some portion of the $700 billion in TARP bailout funds during a speech on the economy next Tuesday.

That idea isn't sitting well with House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), who released a statement this afternoon arguing that such a move would be against the law.

"The President and Speaker Pelosi need to recognize that TARP money was borrowed from the taxpayer to deal with a dire emergency, and now it must be returned," he said. "In fact, current law states that returned TARP funds are to be used to reduce the debt – not more spending preferred by the President. This country is in debt, and the only responsible action is to pay it down, not preserve and expand it."

"TARP funds borrowed from the taxpayer should not become a slush fund for the political whims of Washington," he added.

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Last Christmas season, as the economy fell into a tailspin, Washington filled the stockings of suffering companies — and not always checking whether they'd been naughty or nice.

President Bush offered up $17.4 billion in loans to troubled U.S. automakers, and Congress OK'd the administration's request for a $700 billion bailout of troubled financial institutions (with $1.6 billion of that going to bonuses and perks for bank executives.)

This year, CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer says, Washington is not Santa Claus.

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A longtime member of Congress is under investigation for assisting a bank to which she had personal connections get federal bailout money, a congressional ethics panel said this week.

The House ethics panel is investigating Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) after she arranged in 2008 for a meeting between OneUnited Bank executives and Treasury officials, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Waters' husband, Sidney Williams, was a member of the bank's board until last year, the newspaper reports, and had investments in the bank worth at least $350,000.

The bank received $12 million from the federal government's Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Waters, who serves on the House Financial Services Committee, has defended her request for the meeting as part of her efforts to advocate for minority-owned businesses, the Los Angeles Times reports. She reportedly said that she disclosed her husband's ties to the bank and that her influence had nothing to do with the bailout.

The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), however, claims Waters did not disclose her financial ties to OneUnited Bank when she contacted the Treasury Department to arrange the meetings. The group says Treasury officials claimed they only arranged the meeting after hearing from Waters, even though the bank had requested meetings before.

The investigation has landed Waters on CREW's "15 most corrupt members of Congress" list.

It has been a year since the failure of Lehman Brothers and the subsequent financial and banking crisis on Wall Street that brought the U.S. economy to the brink of collapse; while for months Americans have ranked the economy as the most important problem the country faces, opinions about measures to address the economic instability resulting from last fall's events have found mixed support at best.

In polls conducted last fall, both the general principle of providing government assistance to financial institutions and the specific legislation Congress passed last fall met with lukewarm public support.

A CBS News/New York Times poll conducted September 21-24, 2008, in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, found just 42 percent of Americans approved of the government providing money to Wall Street, and more, 46 percent, disapproved. Those sentiments transcended partisanship: just 43 percent of Republicans, 41 percent of Democrats and 4 percent of independents approved. By October, just 36 percent approved of this approach, and 52 percent disapproved.

Views have not changed much since then. In March 2009, a CBS News Poll found 41 percent approved -- and more, 50 percent, disapproved -- of the government providing money to banks and other financial institutions to try to "help fix the country's economic problems."

Why such lukewarm support for these plans, which were presented as helping the U.S. economy avoid the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression?

One answer could be the blame Americans placed on the banks themselves for the financial troubles they were experiencing. The September 2008 poll found that 46 percent of the public thought that bad management by the banks was to blame for those problems, and just 27 percent thought that a lack of government supervision was to blame. Another 17 percent thought both were at fault. By March, fully 75 percent of Americans felt that the banks' problems were caused by management decisions, and only 17 percent thought they were the result of conditions beyond the banks' control.

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The White House is raising no objections to the $7-million-a-year pay package being given to the new CEO of American International Group – the insurance giant that received a U.S. government bailout package worth $182.5 billion.

"We're not micromanaging these companies," says White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. He says the government "is not making these decisions."

Federal pay czar Kenneth Feinberg is said by the company to have approved in principle of the compensation plan for CEO Robert Benmosche.

Asked why taxpayers "shouldn't feel like suckers if they see the CEO of a government-owned company getting $7 million a year," Gibbs acknowledged that AIG is "a royal mess." But he said the company's board wants "good, competent leadership that can lead the company back toward profitability."

The government now owns about 80 percent of AIG, and Gibbs said it hoped new management can help taxpayers recoup some of the investment they put in to prevent an economic calamity.

At $7 million a year, CEO Benmosche will be earning 17.5 times as much as President Obama, whose salary is set by Congress at $400,000 per annum.

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Politics Today is CBSNews.com's inside look at the key stories driving the day in Politics, written by CBS News Political Director Steve Chaggaris:

**President Obama continues health care push...

**TARP Inspector General to testify on how bailout money is being spent...

HEALTH CARE: As President Obama continues stressing his self-imposed crunch time – his demand that Congress pass health care bills by the first week in August – he also continues his campaign-style focus on the issue.

Today, he meets with members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the three House committees charged with health care reform.

Just prior to that meeting, he'll deliver remarks on health care. Later, he sits down with CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric.

Tomorrow, he'll hold a prime time news conference where he's expected to kick it off with remarks on health care; Thursday, he heads to Cleveland for a town meeting-style event on the issue.

While criticism from Republicans builds, skepticism from some in his own party ramps up and talk of his deadline slipping increases, the president is becoming more aggressive in his push.

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A struggling Hawaii bank received a $135 million federal bailout last fall two weeks after staff from the office of Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, a big investor in the bank, called federal regulators about the aid application, according to a report in ProPublica Tuesday.

Bank regulators had designated Central Pacific Financial as a marginal candidate to receive federal assistance, according to documents cited in the report. But soon after the phone call from Inouye's office, the Treasury directed millions of dollars to bolster the bank's capital reserves.

Inouye, D-Hawaii, owns shares in the bank that totaled between $350,000 and $700,000 at the end of 2007, according to the report. That amounts to roughly two-thirds of the senator's personal wealth.

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American International Group, which stoked populist outrage for distributing large retention bonuses funded by a federal bailout, has once again given taxpayers something to grumble about. As Politico first reported and CBS News has confirmed, the troubled company now says it paid employees $454 million dollars in bonuses in 2008 – an increase from the $120 million it claimed to have paid out in March.

A congressional aide tells CBS News’ Jill Jackson that AIG gave the figure to Rep. Elijah Cummings on Friday.

As Politico points out, this represents the third figure offered by the company concerning its 2008 bonuses. First CEO Edward Liddy told the House Financial Services Subcommittee the bonuses were likely “in the range of $9 million.” A few days later, spokesman Nick Ashooh offered the $120 million number. The new number, $454 million, is nearly quadruple that.

These bonus payments are separate from the $165 million in bonuses given out by the company to employees or former employees of the AIG Financial Products – whose work brought the company to Washington begging for a bailout.

Many of the employees who received portions of the $454 million in bonuses had nothing to do with the financial collapse of the company. The bonuses were given in much smaller amounts this time around, averaging between $5,000 and $50,000 across the entire company.

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The uproar over the $165 million in bonuses that insurance company AIG paid to employees has continued this week -- there have even been protests outside AIG employees’ homes. Certainly, some people are outraged that the bonuses were paid, but how widespread is the anger? Is it shared by most Americans, or just a noisy few? And who is feeling it most?

The most recent CBS News Poll can shed some light on those questions.

Fifty percent of Americans told us they feel angry about the bonuses paid to AIG employees. Another 38 percent say they feel bothered by those bonuses. Just 12 percent are not bothered.

Those who have heard or read a lot about the AIG bonuses are more apt to be angry – 59 percent of them say that’s how they feel. Anger is also more widespread among older Americans – 61 percent of those age 45 and older describe themselves as angry, while among those under 45, just 38 percent are angry.

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