U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, whose Congressional district includes Troup County, voted against a Democratic-sponsored plan to tax AIG bonuses. Here, he explains why.

House and Senate Democrats messed up big time and now they want to tinker with the tax code as part of a public relations stunt.

I know Americans want to punish executives who are getting taxpayer dollars as bonuses - I know it because I’m just as outraged. But honest members of Congress have a duty to stand up against these shenanigans and explain to Americans that Democrats messed up and now they’re trying to sweep it under the rug.

The legislation imposes a retroactive 90 percent tax for bonuses received since Jan. 1 by an employee of any company that has received more than $5 billion from federal bailouts. Language protecting these bonuses in the so-called stimulus package was written entirely by Democrats and signed by President Obama.

I voted against the stimulus that allowed these bonuses and I voted against the TARP legislation that funded these bonuses As I’ve said on the floor of the House, we don’t know what would have happened if Congress hadn’t passed TARP, but we do know that AIG’s employees wouldn’t be getting bonuses because they wouldn’t have jobs.

I didn’t vote ‘no’ because I support bonuses for AIG employees. I voted no because I can’t support using the tax code retroactively to punish a particular group or to score political points.

I don’t want American taxpayers to get back 90 percent of the bonuses; I want them to get back 100 percent of the hundreds of billions they have doled out to corporations whose bad decisions have blown a gaping hole into the global economy.