Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich tells CNN Headline News that he will ask fellow Members to explore ways to stop the flood of executive compensation and bonuses to top officials at Wall Street firms that benefited from the recent $700 billion bailout that he opposed.

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JANE VELEZ-MITCHELL: Tonight: Outrage on Wall Street. Ordinary investors are suffering as the market crumbles. Meanwhile, bank CEOs are getting billions in bonus pay-outs. Talk about stimulus! But how can this be? I'll talk to one angry Congressman who wants to stop the madness.

Now the real outrage. While people are being tossed out of their homes onto the streets, big-shot bankers are still raking it in! According to an ABC News Report, some Wall Street firms -- the very firms that are getting billions in taxpayer dollars as part of this financial bailout -- may still hand out billions in executive bonuses. That's right; "B" - billions! That, even though the bailout package has strict restrictions on executive compensation. So how is this possible, given those restrictions? With me right now, a congressman who is fighting tooth and nail to hold these fat cats accountable; Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich. You probably remember him from some of the presidential debates because he was a candidate.

First of all, full disclosure: I know Dennis. I supported him because we have a lot in common. We are both committed to wiping out obesity crisis. But beyond that, we are both determined to make sure these financial fatties don't keep gobbling up all of America's wealth.

Congressman, great to see you.

DENNIS: Thank you.

How is it possible that these banks are going to take the tax dollars of American workers and hand them out by the millions and billions in the form of pay or bonuses to the very people who got us into this mess?

DENNIS: Well, the way the law was written, it wasn't really tight enough to preclude this. I don't think that Congress ever anticipated that money that was supposed to go for bailouts would end up going for bonuses in these executive pay packages. They were trying to keep a lid on the compensation, but of course there are a lot of other ways you can pay people in order to enhance their own personal bottom lines.

I voted against the bailout specifically because I felt that it was rewarding speculators and bad conduct, and it was an unwarranted intrusion into the free market. And so we end up in a situation where you hear about these bonuses, and it absolutely drives people crazy. Look at all the people losing their homes, investors losing a lifetime of wealth that they worked to accumulate. And I'm asking Congress to get back into this. I've looked at it from the standpoint of my subcommittee, which is Domestic Policy, and, frankly, we're in a race for time here. I'm going to need help. So I'm going to be communicating with Mr. Waxman, who is Chairman of the full committee, to try to get the full committee involved in this quickly so that we can put a stop to it.

We're going to need to stop this. We cannot tell the taxpaying public that this is acceptable.

JANE: Well how do you stop it, Congressman? I want to take a look at some of these...it's unbelievable: let's put up this chart of the pay and bonuses of these banks for the first nine months of this year. Goldman Sachs -- this is pay in bonuses, people -- 13 and a half billion dollars; Morgan Stanley, 10.7 billion; Merrill Lynch, 11.2 billion; CitiGroup, 25.8 billion -- a total of 61 billion dollars in pay and bonuses, Congressman?

We were talking about AIG spending about 400 thousand dollars taking its executives to a spa and spending 23 thousand dollars on massages. That looks reasonable compared to these billions being given to these guys. For what? For doing a bad job and almost destroying their companies?

DENNIS: well, you've got bailouts, bonuses...there's clearly a culture of license and greed. In the meantime, the real economic problems of the American people are not being dealt with. You have millions of people who are facing the loss of their homes.

It would be different if the government decided to buy a controlling interest in mortgage-backed securities and work out something in terms of lower interest payments, lower premiums, stretching out the repayments on homes, keep people in their homes, prime the pump of the economy, get people back to work. We're going to need to do that. Actually, what this points out, Jane, is we're looking at a flawed economic model here. The banks have been working off of a fractional reserve, they've been leveraging money they don't have, creating money out of thin air. This thing is imploding right now. We need to have the government play a vital role, not through giving money to speculators but through priming the pump of the economy and circulating money so it percolates up. The trickle never gets down.

JANE: I want to get back to this whole pay and compensation issue.

DENNIS: Right.

JANE: A New York Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo...AIG is going to freeze 600 million dollars that was set to go to executive compensation. Why can't we look at these banks, since we've given them money and say, "Freeze! No Christmas bonuses in the billions going out, period. We're the government, we gave you this money, you're not going to spend it that way.

DENNIS: Well, this is my intention, and I'm leading the way in trying to move Congress in a direction of taking action before the end of the year. I'm confident that Chairman of our full committee, Mr. Waxman, who has been doing a tremendous job on this, will be receptive to my request that we try to loosen up resources of the full committee to go after Wall Street immediately.

JANE: I want to jump in; we only have a couple of seconds. I just don't understand this. I mean, why didn't the government create restrictions that said, "You can't do this" when they handed the money to these banks?

DENNIS: Jane, I voted against the bailout because it was a nightmare from the beginning. It did not solve the problem. It rewarded speculators. It gave great license to the banks. For example, banks are hoarding money. Some banks are using this money to buy other banks. I mean, that's not what this was supposed to be about.

JANE: Yeah, they were supposed to use the money to give out mortgages, but they're hoarding the money, just like people who got the rebate checks were hoarding the money. And nothing has really happened.

We have to end it there, but we hope you come back. And we hope you're successful in your effort to freeze these pay and bonuses from going out. Last thing: If we had gone into bankruptcy -- if these banks had gone into bankruptcy -- this wouldn't be happening, right? Yes, or no?

DENNIS: How could it?

JANE: Exactly!

DENNIS: The courts wouldn't permit it.

JANE: Exactly! Well, Congressman, thank you so much. And again, keep us posted on your efforts to hold these guys, these fat cats, accountable.

DENNIS: Thank you.