The Trump administration’s intensifying efforts to block oversight of its coronavirus-related rescue programs are raising new alarms with government watchdogs and lawmakers from both parties amid concerns about the anonymity of companies receiving unprecedented levels of taxpayer funds.
Government watchdogs warned members of Congress last week that previously unknown Trump administration legal decisions could substantially block their ability to oversee more than $1 trillion in spending related to the coronavirus pandemic.
In a letter to four congressional committee chairs Thursday, two officials in charge of a new government watchdog entity revealed that the Trump administration had issued legal rulings curtailing independent oversight of Cares Act funding.
The letter surfaced amid growing bipartisan frustration over the administration’s decision not to disclose how it is spending hundreds of billions in aid for businesses. On Monday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin appeared to bow to that pressure, saying he would work with Congress on new oversight measures. But some Democrats have said the White House is not taking disclosure requests seriously enough.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/06/15/inspector-general-oversight-mnuchin-cares-act/For Trump, Conservative Catholics Are The New Evangelicals
Despite losing the popular vote, Trump reached the presidency in large part because he won traditionally Democratic Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, all states in which Catholics outnumber evangelicals by significant margins.
"It was the Catholic vote that won those states for Donald Trump," says Tim Huelskamp, a former Republican congressman from Kansas now serving as an adviser to the Catholics for Trump movement, a coalition that did not formally exist in 2016.
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/26/926659149/for-trump-conservative-catholics-are-the-new-evangelicalsDemocrats accuse SBA of illegally blocking oversight of lending program
The Small Business Administration is illegally stonewalling Congress' watchdog agency from reviewing its handling of a massive coronavirus relief program, House Democrats alleged Wednesday.
In a letter to SBA administrator Jovita Carranza, five Democratic committee and subcommittee chairs said the Government Accountability Office — Congress' independent oversight arm — has been rebuffed in its attempts to interview top SBA officials and access key documents about the implementation of the small business program, known as the Paycheck Protection Program.
"GAO informed the Committees that SBA has not complied with GAO’s requests and repeatedly failed to commit to a timeframe in which SBA would comply," wrote Oversight Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), Small Business Chairwoman Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.), Coronavirus Select Committee Chairman James Clyburn (D-S.C), Appropriations Chairwoman Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) and Appropriations subcommittee chair Mike Quigley (D-Ill.).
"To date, SBA has not granted GAO access to all requested SBA officials for interviews and, according to GAO, SBA officials who have been interviewed have not been fully cooperative in providing timely, fulsome and transparent responses to interview questions," the Democrats added. SBA also has not provided GAO with loan level data on the Paycheck Protection Program."
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/17/sba-gao-ppp-democrats-326734And President Trump has scoffed at oversight, suggesting as he signed the stimulus law that he had the ability to decide what information a new inspector general named to oversee a separate corporate bailout fund could share with Congress. Mr. Trump also in effect ousted the head of a committee of inspectors general responsible for pandemic oversight, known as the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, through a demotion.
Although Mr. Mnuchin promised on Twitter on Monday to work with lawmakers to “strike the appropriate balance for proper oversight of #ppploans and appropriate protection of small business information,” Treasury Department lawyers issued an opinion that would further curtail oversight of more than $1 trillion in aid, according to the letter sent to lawmakers last week, whose contents were first reported by The Washington Post.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/15/us/politics/coronavirus-ppp-trump-congress.htmlWith Trump, everything is always about himself, and the grift.
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