WASHINGTON -- A new oversight board is warning about the strain of the coronavirus pandemic on the U.S. government and calling into question Washington's ability to effectively manage trillions of dollars in aid and keep federal workers safe.
The inaugural report released Wednesday by the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee cites an array of challenges in responding to the outbreak. Thirty-seven agencies summarized the obstacles they face, with financial management and health and safety at the top of most lists.
The report emphasizes a few core concerns, including the financial management of more than $2 trillion in new spending and protecting the health and safety of government workers at prisons, national parks, meatpacking plants and other work sites deemed essential during the pandemic.
The need to quickly spend money authorized by the economic rescue law and to manage new programs "presents a significant challenge to many executive branch agencies," the report said. The sheer size of the largest rescue effort ever approved by Congress increases the risk for fraud and misuse, it said.
[CORONAVIRUS: Click here for our complete coverage » arkansasonline.com/coronavirus]
The warnings come as Republicans and Democrats in Congress have pushed back on the Treasury Department's efforts to limit the release of data on what businesses and other entities have received loans from the government.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told Congress last week that the information is "proprietary," but lawmakers want details released. GOP Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, chairman of the Senate Small Business Committee, has said he is working with the Treasury Department to ensure that at least some of the data is made public.
The committee, established in March by Congress and made up of a board of inspectors general, also said in a letter to lawmakers that they are concerned about a legal determination by President Donald Trump's administration on pandemic funding. They fear it could result in the administration withholding data on recipients of nearly half of the unprecedented $2.4 trillion in aid.
'AGGRESSIVE, INDEPENDENT'
The committee's first report was released with the Justice Department's inspector general, Michael Horowitz, as acting chairman of the oversight group. Glenn Fine, the former acting inspector general of the Defense Department, was appointed to the job shortly after the law was enacted.
But Trump sidelined Fine, demoting him and making him ineligible for the position. The president did not detail his reasons for the move.
Horowitz said Wednesday that the committee will continue to conduct "aggressive, independent" oversight.
Robert Westbrooks, the panel's executive director, called the report a "road map to address risks and other problems with the economic rescue law.
The 92-page report outlines several key areas of concern, including the need for accurate information about virus-related spending and the significant risk agencies face as the result of improper payments.
Similarly, while agencies always prioritize health and safety, the pandemic has created a unique challenge -- "namely, preventing transmission of the virus in federal facilities, among federal employees and individuals with whom they interact."
A shift in March to allow nearly unlimited teleworking at many agencies significantly reduced the risk of virus transmission among federal workers while maintaining most agency operations, the report said.
But employees at agencies where telework is not practical face higher risks of virus complications, the report said. Among them are corrections officers at the Bureau of Prisons and agents at the Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agencies and the Transportation Security Administration.
U.S. Postal Service workers, National Park Service rangers and meat inspectors at the Department of Agriculture also face increased risk, the report said, even as "agencies have devoted considerable efforts to ensuring that they can protect the health and safety of these workers and the people with whom they interact."
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Labor Department agency that oversees workplace safety, is particularly "challenged in fulfilling its mission due to resource constraints and the urgency of actions required," the report said.
OSHA's performance has come under fire in recent weeks, as Democrats and labor unions accuse it of being "largely invisible" during the pandemic.
Instead of developing an emergency rule requiring employers to protect workers from the coronavirus, OSHA has relied on voluntary guidance that recommends companies erect physical barriers, enforce social distancing and install more hand-sanitizing stations, among other steps. But the guidance is not mandatory, and covid-19 cases have spiked at meatpacking plants, prisons, nursing homes and other workplaces.
"OSHA must provide clear and relevant coronavirus-related guidance to help ensure worker safety during the pandemic," the report said, as well as "use its limited resources to timely respond to the significant increase in worker and whistleblower complaints."
WORRIES OVER FUNDS
While the U.S. Chamber of Commerce frets that lawmakers' oversight will be tainted by politics, Democrats such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, an advocate of the watchdogs' role, say the cash is already flowing to undeserving recipients.
"We've seen giant public companies scoop up relief meant for small businesses, an inspector general fired, promises made to muzzle independent oversight," Warren said in a statement.
One of the key oversight figures is Brian Miller, the former White House lawyer chosen by Trump and sworn in June 5 as special inspector general for pandemic recovery.
Sherrod Brown of Ohio, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said Miller had been "evasive" and "unwilling to condemn" Trump for removing several agency inspectors general when he testified in front of the Senate panel. Brown and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer sent Miller a letter on Tuesday saying they were concerned he couldn't be independent from Trump.
Miller must convince Democrats and the Trump administration that he's tough, fair, and someone they should pay attention to, said Neil Barofsky, the first special inspector general who oversaw the Troubled Asset Relief Program during the 2008 financial crisis. He said Miller's most important chance to prove his independence will be his first public report, due in August.
"Your first report is to amplify what you've found. That really defined what we would be," Barofsky said. "There is always going to be tension between a good IG and the agency."
Congress' economic rescue plan, enacted in four bills in March and April, is circulating money into the economy, which came to a near-standstill during the coronavirus lockdowns. The measures provide forgivable loans to small businesses, stimulus checks for individuals, expanded unemployment benefits, payments for health care providers, and money for the Federal Reserve to leverage and lend to businesses.
Some business leaders are wary that lawmakers will be politically motivated in their approach to oversight.
"There's already growing concern that congressional oversight will in part focus on companies or sectors that various elected officials will view as unworthy of assistance, irrespective of whether they qualify under the terms of the programs in question," Neil Bradley, chief policy officer at the Chamber of Commerce, said earlier this month at a hearing of a separate accountability committee made up of federal agency watchdogs.
The Congressional Oversight Commission is designed to be bipartisan, with two members already chosen by Republicans, two picked by Democrats, and a chairman still to be named jointly by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Pelosi and McConnell have been unable to agree on the chairman for more than a month. Pelosi said June 11 that a choice would be announced "very soon," though she also said the same thing in previous weeks.
An earlier congressional oversight panel, during the response to the 2008 financial crisis, took at least several months to begin running smoothly, said Kenneth Troske, a member of the panel led by Warren before she became a senator. That panel ceased operating in 2011.
VACCINE PUSH
Meanwhile, the president is prodding top health officials to move faster on approving a coronavirus vaccine by year's end.
In a meeting last month with Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar -- who is overseeing the effort called Operation Warp Speed, along with Defense Secretary Mark Esper -- Trump pushed Azar to speed up the timeline, according to two senior White House officials familiar with the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
At least 117,000 people in the United States have died of the coronavirus, while more than 2.1 million cases have been reported.
Despite the uptick across much of the country, Vice President Mike Pence, who leads the White House coronavirus task force, said in a Wall Street Journal op-ed Tuesday that fears of a second wave of cases were "overblown," accusing the media of trying to "scare the American people."
Public-health experts reacted with alarm to the op-ed, especially because the nation has not emerged from the first wave, with the number of daily deaths plateauing at about 800.
"What worries me is we are coming up to an election, and the administration might be tempted to put its hand into the Warp Speed bucket, and say we have enough information, let's just give it now," said Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia who is an adviser to the National Institutes of Health effort on vaccines.
Unlike a rare cancer treatment or a drug for a debilitating disease, vaccines are given to healthy people, so there is little tolerance for side effects or risks, vaccine experts say. Another concern is that those who have been immunized may return to behaviors that put them at risk, only to have a vaccine turn out to be ineffective.
Trump administration officials insist the process will be driven by science.
"Under no circumstances will we allow political pressure to affect our decision-making and, importantly, that has not occurred on my watch," said FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, who has denied the White House influenced the agency's emergency authorization of antimalarial drugs.
"Any new vaccine must be thoroughly tested to ensure it is safe and effective, and that is why Operation Warp Speed is being led by expert scientists focused on saving lives," said White House spokesman Judd Deere.
EMERGENCY USE
If a vaccine were approved as early as the fall, it most likely would come in the form of a so-called emergency-use authorization issued by the FDA. Such authorizations require a lower level of evidence of effectiveness than formal approvals. They may be issued if the agency believes a product "may be effective" to prevent or treat a serious or threatening disease, and that its "known and potential benefits" outweigh the risks.
National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins said delivering an emergency-use authorization by the fall is one of the administration's "stretch goals."
"We have for the most part been focused on the stretch goals and trying to inspire everyone" to do things that previously did not seem possible, Collins said in an interview. "Hopefully at least having an EUA for one or more of [the vaccines] by sometime in the fall - that is a stretch goal, and even beyond belief. It has my knuckles white."
Information for this article was contributed by Matthew Daly and Mary Clare Jalonick of The Associated Press; by Laura Davison of Bloomberg News; and by Carolyn Y. Johnson of The Washington Post.
