Bad "Feel Good" Legislation

Back in 2005, the case of a brain-dead woman named Terri Schiavo dominated the news. Her husband, consistently supported by the courts (even by ardently conservative judges), wanted her to be allowed to die, while her parents (and the religious right with their political clout) fought to keep her body alive. The struggle continued to the U.S. Senate, where the Republicans, led by Majority Leader Bill Frist, pushed a special bill, called the Terri Schiavo Bill, specifically designed to determine the outcome of that one single case. Democrats roundly criticized it, claiming that this was poor, knee-jerk legislation. Now let's fast forward to the present.

After losing so much money and procuring so much bailout assistance from the federal government, AIG Corporation infuriated the president and congress by handing out lavish bonuses to its top executives. The only problem was that this was perfectly legal. So the Democrats in the House of Representatives, along with some Republicans, just passed a bill levying a 90% tax specifically on those AIG bonuses. AFTER it was learned that they were being given. Now it is the Republican Party leadership's turn to "stand on principle" and denounce this as knee-jerk legislation targeted at only one circumstance. And they are right; they're just hypocrites, that's all.

I deplore those bonuses as well. And I generally support what the Democrats are trying to do in government. But this time they missed the boat and committed the same after-the-fact faux pas that their political rivals committed four years earlier by enacting legislation retroactively affecting a single party. It may carry popular support and make people feel good, but it's bad legislation. Better to simply recognize the loophole that AIG exploited and fill it in any future bailouts in order to prevent this from happening again.