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April 9, 2020

The Honorable Mitch McConnell Majority Leader
United States Senate Washington, DC 20515

The Honorable Charles Schumer Minority Leader
United States Senate Washington, DC 20515

The Honorable Nancy Pelosi
Speaker of the House of Representatives House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515

The Honorable Kevin McCarthy Republican Leader
House of Representatives Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Senator McConnell, Senator Schumer, Speaker Pelosi, and Congressman McCarthy:

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act creates the five-member “Congressional Oversight Commission” (hereafter “the Commission”) over whose membership you have substantial discretion. We write to call on you to act swiftly to install actors who will take their oversight duties seriously and prioritize the public interest, and thank Leader Schumer for doing so in the case of his recent selection to the Commission.

We are in the midst of an unprecedented health and economic crisis whose contours are not yet fully known. The CARES Act and other measures being implemented to address these matters entrust an extraordinary amount of discretion over spending to relatively insulated actors, especially in the Department of the Treasury and at the Federal Reserve, who are not directly accountable to the general public. Moreover, the Trump administration — through a signing statement appended to the CARES Act and otherwise — is already indicating that it will seek to frustrate efforts to oversee its response to the crisis.

The new Commission is modeled after the Congressional Oversight Panel which was constituted in 2008 and charged with watchdogging management of the Troubled Asset Relief Program. That panel, despite impediments like lack of subpoena power, played a meaningful role in overseeing the implementation of TARP because it was populated with highly-qualified, dogged members like Elizabeth Warren, Damon Silvers, and Ted Kaufman.

We urge you to select Commission members who likewise have experience with oversight and/or investigations, are willing to engage with the broad public, and harbor demonstrated commitments to principles of transparency and accountability, and to the goals of having public funding serve public health, working people, and families and communities — even when these imperatives are at tension with the wants of corporate executives, insiders, or special interests.

Sincerely,