This is the sort of thing that will make the Trump Administration appear to be the most corrupt government – not Administration, but government – in all of history. Catherine Rampell brings the outrage:
What are they hiding?
That’s the question taxpayers should be asking as the Trump administration refuses to reveal where a half-trillion dollars of our hard-earned cash has gone.
In March, back when Congress was rushing to provide more coronavirus relief, lawmakers passed an unprecedented $2 trillion bill known as the Cares Act. After initially fighting to prevent any meaningful oversight of the bailout programs it would administer — at one point even demanding a few-strings-attached Treasury slush fund — the Trump administration eventually agreed to several major oversight and disclosure measures. Senior officials, including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, repeatedly pledged “full transparency on anything we do.”
Yeah, right.
Since then, the administration has worked to sabotage virtually all of these accountability mechanisms. While paying lip service to “transparency,” it has fired, demoted or otherwise kneecapped inspectors general, some of whom recently wrote to congressional leaders warning of systematic efforts to avoid scrutiny required by law. The watchdog Government Accountability Office also complained that the administration has refused to provide critical data on the bailout. [WaPo]
Mnuchin, who I had begun to hope was actually a competent and classy individual, despite his refusal to release the Trump tax returns, has come crashing back into the swamp. This remark was especially revealing:
Despite his alleged commitment to transparency, Mnuchin told lawmakers last week that information on loan recipients and amounts would not be released because it is “proprietary” and “confidential.” Never mind that the PPP loan application form explicitly says borrower information may be “subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.” It adds that “information about approved loans that will be automatically released” (emphasis mine) includes borrower names, collateral pledged and the loan amount.
Focus on that word proprietary. This is not a word you often see used in the public sector, but it’s popular in the private sector. It means This is something we’ve invented and we don’t want to reveal it because, by doing so, we’ll lose a competitive advantage.
In other words, it’s bullshit in this context.
Let’s take a step back and establish firmly why the Administration position is nonsense. First, as Rampell notes, the deal negotiated by Pelosi and Mnuchin specifies effective oversight will be implemented.
Second, who’s supplying the money here? Congress. Not the Trump Administration. Trump is responsible for distributing it according to the rules specified by Congress, but the Administration’s source of funding is Congress and nothing else. If Congress had followed Senator McConnell’s (R-KY) inclination and done nothing, Trump might have been able to shift money around using emergency declarations, much as he did with the Wall funding. Fortunately for Trump, McConnell was apparently informed that doing nothing was not acceptable to his caucus.
The power of the purse gives Congress full oversight and informational access, subject to certain individual privacy concerns, and Mnuchin should know better. So it appears that Mnuchin is just another denizen of the Trump Swamp.
I look forward to years imminent, as we learn just how badly we were scammed by Mnuchin and Trump, and whether or not the courts will cooperate in attempts to claw it back from inappropriate recipients.
