So Who, Exactly, is "The White House"?

Correspondent Paul M. has passed on this post from Marc Ambinder. It's an attempt to defend Chris Dodd from the fury surrounding the legislation that permitted the AIG bonuses. But it may raise more questions than it answers, Ambinder writes:

The truth is that the codicil [that enabled payment of the bonuses] was added in conference by mutual agreement of House and Senate Democrats and the White House.

So when the President says he knew nothing of the bonuses until recently, one has to ask, so just who at "the White House" was signing off on this legislative provision? Did anyone bother to read the contracts that the provision was backstopping -- you know, the ones that apparently guaranteed the bonuses?

And if they're this sloppy about this, how, exactly, do these people think that the government deserves a bigger role in, say, health care?