Aig, Bailouts | featured news

Fallout from anger over AIG's bonuses is following Sen. Chris Dodd from Washington back home to Connecticut.

The House of Representatives is expected to vote Thursday on legislation to try to recoup bonuses paid to Wall Street executives with taxpayer money.

Democrats and Republicans tried to outdo one another in voicing indignation as the House debated a bill to punish A.I.G. executives who got big bonuses.

President Obama said Wednesday that no one in his administration had been responsible for supervising ailing insurance giant AIG but that ultimately, the buck stops with him.

The chief executive officer of failed insurance conglomerate AIG acknowledged Wednesday that the company's multimillion-dollar bonuses were "distasteful" to many and had provoked a firestorm of wrath.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is not a lawyer, nor does he play one on TV. So when just about every question at Tuesday's afternoon briefing concerned bonuses at insurance giant AIG, Gibbs had a non-answer at the ready. "I'm not a contracts lawyer," he said at one point, later explaining that he was "not a contract lawyer," either. When asked whether the president could simply deny more money to AIG unless it scrapped bonuses, he repeated: "Again, I'd refer you to a contract lawyer, which I'm not one."

President Barack Obama declared Monday that insurance giant American International Group is in financial straits because of "recklessness and greed" and said he intends to stop it from paying out millions in executive bonuses.

Insurance giant reveals it paid more than $75B in taxpayer dollars in the final months of 2008 to numerous banks, as well as U.S. municipalities.

The Obama administration sought to reduce the bonuses, but the insurer, which received more than $170 billion in aid, said it was obligated to pay them.

Bernanke accuses company of exploiting gaps in the system, says government 'had no choice' on bailout.