Tracking Bailout Dollars

Believe it or not, the Treasury Department doesn’t keep track of how recipients of bailout dollars from the Troubled Assets Relief Program – better known as TARP – use the taxpayer dollars.  It’s not happening despite a specific recommendation from the Special Inspector General for TARP or the fact that the Treasury Department is a trustee of this $700 billion program and should take that kind of responsibility.  The latest quarterly report of the Special Inspector General said that the Treasury Department has failed to require all but three TARP recipients to provide an accounting of how they’ve used TARP funds.

Congress created TARP last year to keep credit flowing to Main Street, America.  The ink was barely dry on the legislation when the previous Treasury Secretary abandoned the mission.  What’s more, the current Treasury Department has ramped up the use of TARP as a slush fund to pick winners and losers on Wall Street and automakers.

I fought for creation of the Special Inspector General to try to stay on top of how TARP dollars were used, and I worked to get legislation passed to give the Special Inspector General the power it would need after the Treasury Department changed the program.  Even so, the Inspector General has encountered resistance from the Treasury Department and the White House when asking for  information about the program and the flow of TARP dollars.  The roadblocks are inexcusable.  The Treasury Department should act as an ally, not an inhibitor, in facilitating transparency and accountability from TARP participants.

I sent a letter this week to the Treasury Secretary about the department’s failure to meet the requirement defined by the Special Inspector General.  I intend to stay on top of this.  Taxpayers deserve to know that the Treasury Department is requiring basic information in exchange for massive bailouts.