‘Ripe for fraud.’ KY’s Comer tees up first oversight hearing Wednesday probing COVID-19 relief

Rep. James Comer’s scrutiny of the Biden administration commences Wednesday as his Oversight Committee holds its first substantive hearing to begin investigating how federal money allocated for COVID-19 assistance was actually spent.

“Unfortunately over the last two years there hasn’t been a single hearing in the Oversight Committee dealing with the pandemic spending – even though we spent records amounts of money – so that’s very concerning,” Comer said Monday during an appearance at the National Press Club. “I feel like we’re two years behind in oversight so we’re going to have to go back two years to try to get caught up.”

Comer, a Kentuckian who was tapped by his Republican colleagues to chair the powerful House Committee on Oversight and Reform in the new GOP majority, has tapped three witnesses for his first investigatory hearing expected to last multiple hours.

Michael Horowitz, chair of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, has identified $5.4 billion in potentially fraudulent pandemic loans, obtained by using 69,323 questionable Social Security numbers. This covers money appropriated since the pandemic’s origin in 2000 under both the Trump and Biden administrations.

Eligibility for the loans, PRAC wrote in a report, “could have been questioned further” by the Small Business Association to verify accuracy of the borrowers.

Horowitz has already accused the federal government of making a “conscious decision” to ignore fraud when handing out pandemic aid, estimating that the total fraud could be in the “tens of billions” of dollars.

Gene Dodaro, the comptroller general in the U.S. Government Accountability Office, will also appear before Comer’s committee, as will David Smith, the assistant director of the investigatory office inside the U.S. Secret Service.

While the Secret Service’s investigatory unit has been able to retrieve $268 million in stolen loans, Comer wants to see if there’s a mechanism to retrieve even more and hold accountable anyone who “intentionally took the money, mispent the money, made bad decisions about the money.”

The Paycheck Protection Program, a package of bipartisan aid passed to protect businesses and workers during the Trump administration, has already earned considerable attention for its stories of misuse.

“I don’t think history will be kind to the PPP loan program,” Comer said Monday. “I think it’ll be eventually viewed in the same manner that the big bank bailouts were, when people find out where a lot of that money was going.”

Comer also said the unemployment program during the pandemic was “ripe for fraud,” as states were overwhelmed managing and monitoring the influx of money from the federal government.

“I think what we’re going to see is, it was massive fraud with unemployment claims,” he asserted.

Because some Covid-19 relief money has yet to be spent, Comer floated the ability to bring back those dollars as potentially conditional to winning GOP votes to raise the debt ceiling.

Wednesday’s hearing will showcase the full composition and approach of the Oversight Committee, which includes some of the more inflammatory GOP members like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Paul Gosar of Arizona and Jim Jordan of Ohio.

The risk is that the credibility of Comer – and the committee – could be undermined by the partisan theatrics of Greene and others who are pining to make larger political points about the severity of the coronavirus pandemic and the government’s reaction to it.

A national survey taken by the Pew Research Center underscored the pressure Comer faces from the Republican base. Nearly two-thirds of Republicans and independents who lean Republican indicated that GOP congressional leaders should “stand up” to President Biden on matters important to Republican voters, even if it makes it harder to address problems facing the country.

Among all U.S. adults, 65% in the Pew survey. are more concerned that Republicans in Congress will focus too much on investigating the Biden administration.

Tim Stretton, a director on the Project on Government Oversight, acknowledged in a paper that with bipartisanship buy-in on investigations unlikely, there’s even a higher bar for the majority to attain broad credibility with the public.

“It is even more important — frankly, essential — that the majority handle the hearings transparently and fairly, and that the investigation has a clear purpose rather than simply serving as a pretext to prove a partisan conclusion that has no bearing on policy reform,” Stretton wrote.

Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, a more moderate member of the committee, said Comer has set up the panel to pursue substantive policy reforms. But that posture will be put to the test once his colleagues are handed the platform for questioning.

“There’s always going to be members that use committee hearings to launch their next campaign. That’s not something I support. Both parties do that,” Mace said. “I know that Comer is intent on having the committee be taken seriously.”

Wednesday’s hearing will begin at 10 a.m. EST and be broadcast online.

This story was originally published January 31, 2023 at 12:56 PM with the headline "‘Ripe for fraud.’ KY’s Comer tees up first oversight hearing Wednesday probing COVID-19 relief."