Jack Lew’s appearance on Capitol Hill Tuesday turned even uglier than the Treasury secretary might have expected, with Republicans criticizing him personally for the popular mistrust of government.
“You are the epitome of what is wrong with Washington today,” Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J., told Lew as the Treasury chief testified to the House Financial Services Committee on the international financial system.
“The disdain that you have for the American people, the failure of yours to answer the simplest of question, is what is wrong with Washington and why the public has the view of the bureaucracy and the bureaucrats such as yourself here today,” Garrett said.
At issue was the Treasury Department’s response to the committee’s subpoenas regarding its planning for a possible breach of the federal debt ceiling.
In February, the Republicans on the committee said the Obama administration misled Congress and the public about the extent of its planning for paying the government’s bills when the debt ceiling was reached. The committee ultimately subpoenaed documents from the administration last year, an action it said was necessary because the Treasury was not responsive to its requests.
On Tuesday, the committee’s Republicans grilled Lew over what they said was his agency’s noncompliance, asking if he had been directed by the administration not to comply or if he had told Treasury officials not to comply, and barely giving Lew any time to respond.
After Lew three times skirted his questions about whether he knew he was personally responsible for complying with the subpoena or if he had been ordered not to comply, the committee’s chairman, Jeb Hensarling of Texas, blamed him for the political division in the country. “No wonder the American people get outraged,” he said when Lew responded that the Treasury was working to comply with the committee’s requests.
“Are you having any trouble hearing today?” Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis., asked Lew after the Treasury secretary avoided giving yes-or-no answers to Duffy’s aggressive questioning.
“You are everything that’s wrong with government,” Duffy later said.
Multiple times during the hearing, as the questioning from Republicans became increasingly hostile, the top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Maxine Waters of California, asked for the committee to recess or to give Lew additional time to defend himself.
Following the hearing, the Treasury insisted that it has taken steps to address each inquiry from the committee.
“Treasury has provided thousands of pages of documents and repeatedly offered to meet with the Committee to discuss its priorities and how we can address the Committee’s remaining interests,” a spokesperson said in a statement to the Examiner. “Treasury remains prepared to make a principled effort to discern and meet the needs of the Committee, but we cannot engage in the accommodation process unilaterally.”
