During today's Senate Banking Committee hearing, Senator Warner said he is "very troubled" with the government's open-ended involvement with AIG and questioned Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner about his apparent lack of flexibility in reducing payments to the AIG "counterparties" -- those AIG investors who will get 100 percent of their money back. 

He said: 

"We all acknowledge we're in the 100-year flood, and we're taking extraordinary actions that cause us all great concern, but... the counterparties at AIG seem to be the [only ones] coming out whole, when everyone else across the board has taken some level of ‘haircut’.”

AIG has received or been promised more than $150 billion in bailout money. Secretary Geither replied, "I would not give a penny to AIG to protect counter-parties" if he didn't have pay them to reduce the risk to pensions and other taxpayer-related funds that have done business with and are owed money by AIG.

Secretary Geithner said, while he shared Senator Warner's frustration, the Treasury Department currently does not have the authority to clean up large financial institutions.

Senator Warner said he would be willing to co-sponsor bipartisan legislation with Tennessee Senator Bob Corker that would give the government specific authority to do that with AIG.

He also urged Secretary Geithner to develop a "macro-policy" that says exactly how much money the taxpayers can expect back from the $700 billion government bailout of financial institutions through the TARP program. 

Here are Senator Warner's comments and questions during the hearing: