Looks like top Congressional Democrats didn’t find yesterday’s GAO report on how Treasury is implementing the bailout program any more encouraging than we did.
In a statement, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said:
The GAO’s discouraging report makes clear that the Treasury Department’s implementation of the (rescue plan) is insufficiently transparent and is not accountable to American taxpayers.”
And Rep. Barney Frank, who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, agreed, saying in his own statement:
The American people received two kinds of news about the TARP program - bad and worse news.The bad news was confirmation by the GAO in its first report about the program that Treasury has no way to measure whether taxpayer funds invested in banks are being used in accordance with the purpose of the law - to increase lending. The much worse news is Treasury’s response that it does not even have the intention of doing so.
Frank added: “A public hearing on the issues raised by the GAO report is now essential.”