Investigating AIG Severance Package

Taxpayers are fed up with massive payouts to executives at companies that took taxpayer money to be bailed out.  Last Friday, I asked the administration’s Special Master for Compensation to account for a newly revealed multi-million dollar severance agreement for an AIG executive who resigned. 

It was reported that this top AIG executive will receive between $2.8 million and $3.8 million in severance following her resignation on December 30, 2009.  Severance agreements are generally intended for involuntary separations, but in this case, it doesn’t appear the executive was truly involuntarily terminated.  On the contrary, she reportedly decided to leave the company because she was unwilling to accept the limit on executive salaries imposed by the TARP program.  So, I want to know what happened, and the public deserves accountability from the government agencies administering and overseeing the bailout program.

My questions this month for the Special Master for Compensation follow efforts over the last year to hold government officials accountable.  More than a year ago, I worked to create a Special Inspector General for the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, to try to hold the program accountable, and I co-sponsored legislation to strengthen the ability of the Special Inspector General to conduct oversight after the original mission of TARP was changed.  I also battled the White House after it tried to subject the requests of the Special Inspector General to the red tape of the Paperwork Reduction Act.