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An Outbreak Of Outrage

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The Washington Post

Published: March 23, 2009

WASHINGTON - History will record the third week of March 2009 as Outrage Week in Washington.

The initial outrage outbreak followed revelations of million-dollar bonuses at bailout beneficiary American International Group. Like a spring fever, outrage jumped party lines, and 85 House Republicans joined the Democratic majority in passing a punitive 90 percent tax on the bonuses.

Then came the backlash to the outrage. The sages of Washington warned of mob rule, chaos in the streets. But then some people hollered that not being outraged was itself an outrage.

At the core of all this populist outrage and elite counter-outrage is a mystery: Why now, exactly? Why did the AIG case - $165 million in bonuses, contractually agreed upon last year - roil the capital so feverishly after months of the government shoveling tens of billions, hundreds of billions, make that trillions of dollars, to private companies?

It may simply be that, after months of dismaying reports of executives getting fat bonuses, the AIG case was the final tumbler in the lock. This one clicked. And bonuses aren't abstractions: AIG might be a faceless corporation (what does it stand for, again?), but its executives can easily be pictured as they pocket their 1, 2, 4, 6 million dollars in bonuses - each.

"Why do they deserve that bonus?" asked David Donaldson, a sanitation worker emptying garbage cans near the White House.

Co-worker Ricardo Brandon said, "We get a bonus; we get, like, 50 cents. Dealing with hazardous materials. Having to fight off rats."

Susan Hayden, a meeting planner, offered her theory of why this scandal cut to the bone so much more than others: The economy has gotten worse and worse

"These guys aren't worth it," she said. "It's kind of like the old-boy network. It's kind of exploded."

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