21 Mar 2009 New Tax Betrays the Founders, Borelli Charges

Project 21’s Deneen Borelli says it’s not just the issue of the ban on bills of attainder that make Congress’ anti-AIG tax constitutionally suspect.

It’s also unconstitutional to interfere this way in contracts:

Legislation to specifically target AIG employees with a 90 percent tax on retention bonuses directly conflicts with the founding principles of the United States, Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli charged today on the Fox News program “Strategy Room.”Saying Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution prohibits the government from passing laws “impairing the obligation of contracts,” Borelli says the AIG bonus controversy is a creation of the lawmakers who rushed bailout legislation earlier this year without due consideration.  These are the same lawmakers who now seek to hide their mistakes by pushing this new and selective tax.

“Politicians need to be reminded that we are a nation of laws.  To impose a hastily-concocted tax as a means of rectifying a problem that the government itself created and mismanaged calls their ability to lead into question,” says Borelli.  “To suddenly enact a new tax to punish a few dozen people for something that was legal at the time is ludicrous, and it smacks of the British treatment of the colonists that provoked the revolt that created the United States.  Have we come full circle already?”

Read the rest here.