Obama Administration – Trashing the Constitution Day 58

By Liberty - Last updated: Wednesday, March 18, 2009 - Save & Share - 2 Comments

Even though they knew about it, and even though AIG is following the law as written by them, well read it yourself:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced on the Senate floor Tuesday that the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee will pursue a legislative fix in such a way that the “recipients of those bonuses will not be able to keep all their money — and that’s an understatement.”

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Montana, will propose a special tax within the next 24 hours, Reid said.

“I don’t think those bonuses should be paid,” Baucus said Tuesday.

The idea was first floated Monday by Sen. Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.

“One idea we’re kind of thinking about is a tax provision,” the Connecticut Democrat told CNN. “We have a right to tax. You could write a tax provision that’s narrowly crafted only to the people receiving bonuses. That’s a way maybe to deal with it.”

At an unrelated hearing Tuesday at which IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman was testifying, Baucus asked the nation’s top tax official, “What’s the highest excise tax we can impose that’s sustainable in court?”

Shulman did not respond directly, but Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, chimed in to suggest the tax could be as high as “90 percent.”

Let’s see, we have law abiding citizens, legal activity, and the Democrats in power are talking about confiscating their property. Who is next?

Bill of Attainder
Definition: A legislative act that singles out an individual or group for punishment without a trial.

A bill of attainder was a legislative act that singled out one or more persons and imposed punishment on them, without benefit of trial. Such actions were regarded as odious by the framers of the Constitution because it was the traditional role of a court, judging an individual case, to impose punishment.” William H. Rehnquist, The Supreme Court, page 166.