Happy Friday!

Hello everybody and welcome to the Shuster "Daily Briefing" for March 20, 2009. How about the spring time weather along the east coast? Magnificent, eh? We've got a terrific show coming up tonight. Our star intern Yang Wang is in charge of today's briefing. Yang, take it away!

Thanks Shuster. The AIG headlines are not fading. There are still more questions than answers about what the Obama treasury department knew and didn't know. Plus, Federal Reserve ChairmanBen Bernanke became part of the story today when he urged bank supervisors to closely oversee their executives’ compensations.

We will start tonight's show with an update on all of the developments in Washington regarding AIG. As you know, the House yesterday passed a bill that would heavily tax AIG bonuses. That measure has now hit something of a roadblock in the U.S. Senate.

In any case, there are some very deep concerns in the banking community that the Congressional measure, if it becomes law, would hurt the credit crisis. Basically, the bill would restrict compensation to any bank that received over $5 billion in bailout funds. So, the banks might then decide not to participate in the program. And without the government dollars, their balance sheets will remain tight and they might continue to hoard their funds, thereby restricting the flow of credit. It's complicated, indeed. None the less, Republicans were split in the House yesterday over what to do. We will get an update.

By the way, regardless of what the Senate eventually does with the legislation, a huge irony is that the tax bill would not address nearly $2.5 billion in bonuses paid last fall to Merrill Lynch just before it merged with Bank of America.

We had a couple of options for "Hypocrisy Watch." First, we were struck by the effort of Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., to save some money on his taxes by essentially declaring Maryland as his main residence. But, it now appears Mr. Stark will not contest the tax issue. So, we will get to an update over Rep. Michelle Bachmann, R-Minn. In her effort to defend her earmarks in the stimulus bill, she misled viewers about some of her congressional colleagues.

At the half hour, we will get a Mythbuster segment with Newsweek's Daniel Gross. He is the author of a terrific book called, "Dumb Money: How Our Greatest Financial Minds Bankrupted the Nation." The myth Dan will be tackling for us tonight is the suggestion that nobody can really be pinpointed as "at fault" in the AIG mess. Au contraire!

Later, we will talk about the political implications of the bailout problems with Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis and Republican strategist Brad Blakeman.

After that, we will look at the new organic White House vegetable garden. The First Lady broke ground on that project today. It fulfills something of a dream for a group of guys involved in the "White House Organic Farm Project." Tonight we will talk with one of the founders, Daniel Bowman Simmon.

In case you missed yesterday’s Jay Leno’s talk with President Obama, we will have recaps later in the show.

"Quote of the Day" comes from Oscar Wilde:

"Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing. "

Thanks in advance for watching tonight's show. "1600" airs at 6 p.m. in Washington, D.C.; 5 p.m. in Minneapolis; 4 p.m. in Denver; and 3 p.m. in Seattle.

Shuster

P.S. Please sign up your friends/family/colleagues for this briefing.