Congress begins oversight of coronavirus spending

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats planned to press White House lawyer Brian Miller on Tuesday about his ability to act independently of President Donald Trump if he is confirmed as a new inspector general, setting up one of Congress’s first clashes about the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Miller, who is currently senior associate counsel of the Office of White House Counsel, played a role in defending Trump during the recent impeachment inquiry. Trump has nominated him to serve as Special Inspector General for Pandemic Recovery. This would place him in charge of overseeing a roughly $500 billion Treasury fund created as part of Congress's $2 trillion Cares Act in late March.

In a four-paragraph opening statement to the Senate Banking Committee released Monday afternoon, Miller promised to carry out his duties “with fairness and impartiality” and be independent and fair. But Democrats have said they are concerned that he might pull his punches as the Treasury Department decides how to quickly disburse all the taxpayer funds.

They have recently ramped up their complaints about the White House's management of the economic rescue package, questioning whether taxpayer money is being wasted or if safeguards are being put on any of the programs.

"Mr. Miller will have to prove he works for the American people, not the White House," Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said in a statement to The Washington Post. "He will have to show that he can hold the Trump administration accountable and ensure that the money allocated by Congress goes to workers, small businesses, and communities impacted by the crisis."

After approving nearly $3 trillion to rescue the economy from the coronavirus pandemic, Congress has moved very slowly in formally scrutinizing how the money has been spent. The Trump administration has already said it is backstopping more than $500 billion in newly issued business loans. It has also begun issuing more than $200 billion in "economic impact" payments to households. There has been very little disclosure about how these programs are performing or whether any mistakes are being corrected.

Lawmakers haven't conducted any oversight hearings yet, largely because lawmakers have steered clear of the Capitol during the pandemic.

And the White House is clamping down on testimony from administration officials, insisting on approving all requests for testimony. Last week, they blocked lead administration scientist Anthony Fauci from appearing before a House subcommittee that wanted him to testify this week.

Trump told reporters Tuesday that he didn't want Fauci to testify before the House.

"The House is a setup," he said. "The House is a bunch of Trump haters." On Friday, a White House spokesman had offered a different explanation, saying it would be "counterproductive" to have Fauci or others involved in the coronavirus response take time out from their work to appear before Congress.

Fauci and others are scheduled to testify before the Senate's health committee next week, in a process will largely be run by Republicans.

Despite the multiple oversight mechanisms, not everybody is convinced the process has worked so far. "If the idea was to create enough redundancy that there'd be effective oversight, mission most definitely not accomplished," said Neil Barofsky, who was the first inspector general for the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program passed at the height of the financial crisis in 2008.

Fauci and others will testify before the Senate's health committee next week, though the process will largely be run by Republicans.

In his opening statement, Miller will say he has won support from Democrats and Republicans in the past, according to a draft posted on the Senate Banking Committee's website. His background also includes nine years as inspector general for the General Services Administration, where he won praise for acting independently and investigating corruption inside an agency with a budget of more than $20 billion that oversees thousands of federal properties.

The position he has been nominated for is modeled after the inspector general created to oversee the federal bailout passed during the financial crisis a decade ago. That inspector general uncovered numerous instances of fraud that sent people to jail.

Miller's confirmation hearing will take place Tuesday afternoon before the Senate Banking Committee and will be the first in-person hearing related to the coronavirus since the House and Senate largely abandoned Washington in late March amid the pandemic's deadly and economically devastating march across the nation. Since then, lawmakers returned periodically only to approve huge spending bills with little debate. The Senate reconvened this week, but the House remains out of session.

Senate Democrats have lambasted Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., for bringing the Senate back into session this week without plans to devote more attention to coronavirus oversight or legislation, especially since hearings are planned for unrelated nominees Democrats oppose.

"Providing vigorous oversight of legislation we've already passed would have been a better use of the Senate's time," Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor Tuesday.

In his own floor remarks, McConnell said "our task in the weeks ahead will be to keep seeking thoughtful solutions that are not just for the very short term, but will help pivot towards a phased reopening and recovery," including passing business liability protections that Democrats oppose.

The afternoon hearing on Miller could be an unusual spectacle, with the nominee and some senators expected to attend in person while others join via video conference, according to committee staff.

Although appointed by the president, inspectors general are supposed to be independent. But Trump has demonstrated a pattern of retaliating against inspectors general who take actions he dislikes, or produce unflattering findings.

On the same day he announced Miller's nomination last month, Trump fired the intelligence community watchdog who had alerted Congress to a whistle-blower complaint that came to be at the center of the impeachment inquiry.

Last week, he moved to replace the top watchdog at the Department of Health and Human Services after her office released a report on the shortages in testing and personal protective gear at hospitals. He also recently removed the acting Pentagon inspector general, who had been expected to serve as head of a separate coronavirus oversight entity composed of inspectors general of multiple agencies and tasked with overseeing the overall federal response.

Together these moves raise the question of whether Miller, if confirmed by the Senate, will have the leeway to function independently as Congress intended, said Danielle Brian of the Project on Government Oversight, an expert on inspectors general. Miller's ultimate confirmation is likely, as Republicans control the Senate and only a majority vote is required to install him in the job.

"He has a choice — either he does his job well and invokes the wrath of the president, or the reverse is, obviously, he can keep his head down and then we lose out on an aggressive IG," Brian said.

The new Special IG for Pandemic Recovery is only one piece in a complicated and overlaying set of oversight mechanisms Congress has put in place to monitor the coronavirus response, leading Trump to complain that he is again being subjected to a Democratic witch hunt.

Addressing reporters Tuesday before leaving the White House to travel to Arizona, Trump complained about a new select committee that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., created over the objections of Republicans.

"They put every Trump hater on the committee, the same old stuff," Trump said. "They frankly want our situation to be unsuccessful, which means death, which means death, and our situation is going to be very successful."

But the issues that have emerged in the federal spending in response to the coronavirus — such as big businesses tapping into a small business loan program — have been uncovered by the media, not Congress or any of the oversight groups. That’s because they have mostly not yet begun to function.

» FAQ: Your coronavirus questions, answered.

A congressional oversight commission created in the Cares Act, and like the new inspector general tasked with overseeing the $500 billion Treasury fund, cannot begin to function until its chairperson is appointed jointly by Pelosi and McConnell. The two have spoken, but it's unclear when they will make their appointment.

The separate select committee of lawmakers that Pelosi created also is in limbo because Republicans have not yet announced their appointments to the panel or even said whether they will participate.

Barofsky and others have raised concerns about a statement Trump issued when he signed the Cares Act, which suggested he might seek to block provisions in the legislation that allow the inspector general to alert Congress if he is not getting the information he wants from the executive branch. But Barofsky also noted that because much of the money in the $500 billion Treasury fund has not yet been obligated, it is not too late for good oversight.

There is one oversight group that has gotten up and running to a degree: the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, which is a group of inspectors general charged with overseeing the entire federal response to the coronavirus and all the spending approved thus far and into the future. Even though Trump removed the inspector general initially chosen to chair the committee, the group launched a website last week and also announced the appointment of an executive director. It does not appear to have gotten much further than that.

Adam J. Levitin, a professor at Georgetown University Law who played a key oversight role during the financial crisis bailout programs of 2008 and also consulted with Democrats on the oversight language in the Cares Act, said the most problematic program thus far appears to be the small-business Paycheck Protection Program.

If confirmed, Miller's office wouldn't be tasked with scrutinizing this program because it is being run by the Small Business Administration, which has its own inspector general. Multiple problems have come to light where large businesses tapped into the program, in some cases returning the funds after their involvement became publicized.

Democrats have complained about lack of transparency in the small business program, which is not disclosing who is getting the loans. The Small Business Administration says it does not have the ability to disclose this information because banks and other lenders are the ones actually issuing the loans. But Democrats reject this explanation, and Schumer and Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., intend to try to advance legislation on the Senate floor later Tuesday that would require frequent disclosure of the loan amounts and who is getting them. Republicans are likely to block the effort.

Levitin said there could be problems with other aspects of the federal spending that aren’t yet known because there has been no real oversight conducted. “There are some unknown unknowns which scare me,” Levitin said.