Full letter here.

May 26, 2020

Dear Members of the Senate and House:

We strongly urge that Congress strengthen the oversight and anti-corruption measures over the $3 trillion and growing Coronavirus relief legislative programs.

Our organizations represent broad and diverse constituencies across the ideological spectrum concerned about the potential for fraud, waste and abuse of the nation’s largest spending packages in history.

Congress recently passed three relief bills, with the last and most robust being the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, (“CARES Act”), which provide critical aid to citizens and businesses struggling to stay afloat in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic. The CARES Act contains several notable oversights provisions designed to promote transparency of how these funds are being spent.

But these oversight measures have been slow to be implemented, if at all. Even with the limited transparency measures currently in place, many instances of self-dealing, fraud and waste have already become public record. The potential for further abuse is enormous, which demands further actions by Congress to protect taxpayer dollars and to ensure that the public understands whether relief funds are being spent as intended and for the good of the nation as a whole and to the needs of those most vulnerable. Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.), and Reps. John Sarbanes (D-Md.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), have proposed oversight legislation that would do exactly that: the Coronavirus Oversight and Recovery Ethics Act (“CORE Act”).