Happy St. Patrick's Day!
Hello everybody and welcome to the Shuster "Daily Briefing" for March 17, 2009. Our intern Zach Gold has the briefing today, so Zach, take it away!
Thanks Shuster! Get ready for a great show tonight. It’s going to be an exciting day with the President and Irish Prime Minister meeting and confirming the bonds between the two countries while the White House fountains run green. But, the big story everywhere is still AIG's huge executive bonuses.
We are starting our show tonight with a live report on the White House's reaction to the AIG bonuses and what they will be doing about the situation. The time line on this story is something of an embarrassment to the White House. We will explain. Also, we will talk with Montana Sen. John Tester, D-Mont., to get Congress' reaction to the bonuses. Also, we will get Sen. Tester's take on Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley's very controversial comments that the AIG executives should either resign or commit suicide.
In our second block, we will look at the possible remedy to the AIG bonuses withRep. Gary Peters, D-Mich. He has an intriguing tax proposal idea that would force the executives to give their bonus money back to the treasury at a 100 percent rate.
In "Hypocrisy Watch," we will scrutinize President Obama's apparent surprise at the bonuses paid out by AIG, even though the administration knew about the contracts beforehand when negotiating with AIG the previous week.
Moving into our panel, we will ask our guests, including Ed Schultz, host of The Ed Schultz Show and Tucker Bounds, who was a spokesman for the 2008 McCain-Palin campaign, their opinion on the public and congressional anger over the AIG bonuses and whether or not that anger is damaging President Obama's political capital and ability to achieve his top legislative goals.
After that, we will bring you an update on former Bush advisor Karl Rove. Rove is frequently the subject of Shuster's "Hypocrisy Watch" segment. Shuster always invites Karl to come on and defend himself. This weekend, Rove sent him an e-mail and Shuster will show it on the air tonight and respond in kind.
Finally, we will ask our panel to weigh in on a few of the videos/questions you recommended via Twitter.
Our "Quote of the Day" is from Thomas Edison:
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."
Hope you will join us once again tonight on St. Patrick's day. "1600" airs at 6 p.m. in Washington, D.C.; 5 p.m. in Little Rock; 4 p.m. in Santa Fe; and 3 p.m. in Oakland.
Shuster