Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) accused the House Oversight Committee of “rank partisanship” in the panel’s first hearing into the first GOP-controlled hearing into misuse of federal grants and loans during the coronavirus pandemic.
Ocasio-Cortez, the committee’s No. 2 Democrat, accused Republicans of playing politics for demanding figures about pandemic spending from California, Pennsylvania, and New York, all Democratic-controlled states, while ignoring instances of fraud in Kentucky, Louisiana, and Arizona.
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“I cannot for the life of me understand why the majority would send these three letters just to these three states. That leaves us with no other conclusion that there seems to be some rank partisanship in this investigation,” she concluded. “Republicans, I ask if we’re going to start off, let’s do it right.”
Chairman James Comer (R-KY) agreed that all forms of corruption need to be investigated.
“I would love to work with you on that or any of the 50 states because I believe it’s a problem in all 50 states, especially Kentucky. You’re exactly right,” he said.
The hearing, titled “Federal Pandemic Spending: A Prescription for Waste, Fraud, and Abuse,” marks House Republicans’ first foray into investigating the government response to the pandemic and targets the spending programs it launched to keep people and businesses afloat during shutdowns. Democrats used their time to scrutinize the response under former President Donald Trump, with the discussion veering into broader critiques of the Department of Labor and state-level spending programs from both sides of the aisle.
“I intend to focus this committee’s attention and resources on its core mission: to ensure our government is working for the American people in an efficient manner, agencies guard taxpayer funds from fraudsters and ineligible participants, and political leadership be held accountable for the bad consequences of their policies,” Comer said in his opening statement. “Last Congress, Democrats strayed far from this mission. The Biden administration faced little to no scrutiny under unchecked, one-party Democrat rule in Washington.”
Ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) followed by naming several instances in which the Democratic-controlled panel exercised oversight and regained money that had been handed out to fraudsters.
“I’m troubled that some of our colleagues are … cherry-picking facts and deploying distorted figures to attack the legitimacy of these essential programs themselves by vaporizing the reality that they were a lifeline and salvation for millions of businesses and families, including in their own states,” he said.
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Raskin took aim at the Trump administration’s own “lackadaisical stewardship” of the federal relief programs.
The new Republican majority has promised to hold the Biden administration accountable and launch investigations into the pandemic, the United States’s relationship with China, and the issues with the southern border. The House Judiciary Committee also held its first hearing into the border on Wednesday.
