“Omerta” is the Italian word for the Mafia’s code of silence. It is practiced in some Washington precincts, too, judging by the responses of three former Obama administration officials to questions posed to them by members of a House oversight subcommittee yesterday.
Ron Bloom, the former chairman of President Obama’s Task Force on the Auto Industry (Auto Task Force), and former members Harry Wilson and Matthew Feldman, were called to appear before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s Subcommittee on TARP, Financial Services and Bailouts.
Recommended Stories
They were called because the trio had refused for months on end to answer any questions put to them by Christy Romero, the Special Inspector-General for the TARP (SIGTARP) program, in her staff’s efforts to learn whether the Auto Task Force had a role in a controversial Pension Benefits Guaranty Corp. (PBGC) decision in the Obama bailout of General Motors in 2009.
The PBGC had approved a deal under which the pension and other benefits of an estimated 20,000 former salaried employees of Delphi – once a giant auto parts supplier that was spun off from GM – weren’t “topped up” under the bailout, while those of thousands more hourly workers were. That decision effectively reduced the pension and health benefits received by thousands of salaried Delphi retirees by as much as 70 percent.
The Omerta Trio initially refused to cooperate with SIGTARP because the Auto Task Force had been sued by the Delphi Salaried Retirees Association (DSRA). But months ago a judge hearing the suit freed the trio to answers SIGTARP questions, if they chose to do so.
They continued to refuse to answer questions, so SIGTARP, which lacks subpoena power, asked the subcommittee to summon the three men to yesterday’s hearing. And the Omerta pretty much continued, despite revelation of incriminating emails that seemed to make clear the Auto Task Force was very much involved in the decision-making that resulted in the Delphi deal.
Rep. Michael Turner’s cross-examination of Bloom in the video above is an especially revealing illustration of Omerta in action on Capitol Hill.
