[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 177 (Thursday, November 20, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10750-S10751]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mrs. McCASKILL (for herself, Mr. Grassley, Ms. Collins, Mr. 
        Lieberman, and Mr. Bunning):
  S. 3716. A bill to amend the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 
2008 (Public Law 110-343) to provide the Special Inspector General with 
additional personnel, audit, and investigation authorities; to the 
Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, seven weeks ago Congress faced an 
extremely difficult decision of whether or not to pass an unprecedented 
$700 billion economic stabilization bill to help our Nation's economy 
and financial markets. The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, the 
Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by the President, was 
designed to provide new, expanded authority to the Department of the 
Treasury to take immediate action to stabilize our financial markets by 
purchasing troubled assets through a program called the Troubled Asset 
Relief Program or TARP. This new authority was designed to stop the 
continued declines in the financial services industry and the credit 
markets.
  Like many of the thousands of constituents from Iowa I've heard from, 
I shared their concerns that the stabilization plan put hundreds of 
billions of taxpayer dollars at risk. During the debate on this 
legislation I made it clear that I would only support this package if 
it included significant checks on the spending through various 
oversight mechanisms. I wanted to make sure the legislation wasn't a 
blank check for Government bureaucrats to spend taxpayer dollars with 
impunity. I'm glad that Congress listened to my concerns and I'm glad 
that specific oversight reforms I recommended were included in the 
final package. For instance, the creation of a Special Inspector 
General for the Troubled Assets Relief Program (Inspector General) was 
something I worked to include in the final legislation to ensure that 
an independent watchdog would be looking out for taxpayer funds 
allocated to the TARP.
  The legislation also has a number of additional oversight provisions 
such as the creation of a Financial Stability Oversight Board that is 
responsible for reviewing the exercise of the program to ensure the 
Treasury is operating as

[[Page S10751]]

envisioned. Additionally, the legislation included provisions requiring 
regular reports from the Treasury to Congress, Tranche reports 
outlining any assets Treasury chooses to purchase, and reports from the 
Comptroller General at the Government Accountability Office. The Act 
also places controls on executive compensation and corporate governance 
at participating entities. Taken together, these provisions were aimed 
to provide a sturdy foundation for ensuring the program is properly 
overseen.
  However, despite these controls, many of these oversight provisions 
have been slowly implemented or outright ignored until recently. To 
date, the Senate has only held hearings on the nomination for the 
Special Inspector General and it is unclear when the nomination will be 
approved. Until then, the Inspector General at the Department of the 
Treasury has devoted some resources to overseeing the TARP, but we need 
to act expeditiously to approve the Special Inspector General to ensure 
someone is watching over all these taxpayer funds.
  I do believe once we confirm a nominee to be the Special Inspector 
General that this office will face an uphill battle to work quickly to 
hire staff and to get operations moving to find out where all the 
billions of dollars are and how they were spent. This isn't an 
impossible task, but it is one that will take serious effort and great 
leadership to accomplish.
  One concern I have with the Special Inspector General is the lack of 
authority that office will have to oversee the TARP and new, evolving 
programs under the TARP such as the Capital Purchase Plan, or CPP. The 
Secretary of the Treasury has indicated publicly that he intends to 
continue utilizing his authority under the Act to use the TARP and the 
CPP to continue to provide taxpayer funds via equity injections and 
stock warrant purchases to banks, financial institutions, and other 
entities, as opposed to purchasing distressed assets as the TARP was 
originally envisioned. While the Secretary is acting within his 
authority, this change was not necessarily envisioned from the 
oversight perspective when the Special Inspector General authorization 
was drafted. Instead, the current Act could be construed to only give 
the Special Inspector General the authority to review purchases of 
distressed assets and not the purchases and equity injections currently 
ongoing under the CPP. As a result, the Special Inspector General could 
be limited in authority to review the TARP before he takes office.
  To rectify this, Senator McCaskill and I are here today to introduce 
a simple legislative fix to this provision that would amend the Act to 
allow the Special Inspector General to review all actions taken under 
the TARP, including those of the CPP. This is a straight forward 
solution to ensure that the Special Inspector General has all the 
authority necessary to oversee the taxpayer dollars that are being used 
to stabilize the financial industry.
  This legislation makes one other change to the Act that will help the 
Special Inspector General hit the ground running once the Senate 
confirms the nomination. Looking back to the last Special Inspector 
General Congress created, the Special Inspector General for Iraq 
Reconstruction, SIGIR, we noted that Congress provided SIGIR the 
authority to utilize special hiring authority to fill these important 
jobs quickly and not have them tied up in bureaucratic red tape. This 
section of our bill simply states that the Special Inspector General 
may utilize special expedited hiring authority authorized under 5 
U.S.C. Sec. 3161 for the first six months after the date of enactment 
to get the office up and running. Further, the section also removes 
statutory limits for how long these special appointments may serve 
because we do not want to limit the length of time these employees can 
work for the Special Inspector General given we don't know how long 
they will be needed to oversee this program.
  Taken together, these two simple provisions are necessary to ensure 
that the Special Inspector General is the aggressive, independent 
watchdog we envisioned when we passed the Act and not just a paper 
tiger. As a long time supporter of Inspectors General, I believe this 
legislation is necessary to ensure the success of the Special Inspector 
General. I urge my colleagues to support this urgent legislative fix to 
help ensure that American taxpayer dollars are not lost to fraud, 
waste, or abuse because of a simple oversight in the drafting of the 
original legislation.
                                 ______