Is Trump Implementing COVID Relief Efforts With ‘No Oversight’?

A claim by Joe Biden is inaccurate.

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During a virtual rally in Wisconsin Wednesday, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden claimed that President Trump was implementing the coronavirus relief effort with “no oversight, no IGs [inspectors general], no accountability.”

Despite what the vice president said, several different methods of oversight for the coronavirus relief effort were created by the CARES Act. Perhaps the most significant is the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, established by Section 15010 of the CARES Act established “to promote transparency and conduct and support oversight of covered funds and the Coronavirus response.” The committee’s responsibilities include, among others, auditing the economic relief funds to prevent waste and abuse and ensure the money is efficiently distributed. 

The CARES Act also outlined the membership of the committee: the inspectors general of the departments of Defense, Education, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Justice, Labor, and the Treasury, plus the inspectors general of the Small Business Administration and Tax Administration, a position in the Treasury Department that oversees the IRS. The committee had initially selected the acting director of the Department of Defense, Glenn Fine, as its chairman, but he was controversially removed from his post as acting inspector general by President Trump, thus disqualifying Fine from membership on the committee.

Trump replaced Fine with the inspector general of the Environmental Protection Agency Sean O’Donnell, who, by virtue of his new position as acting inspector general of the Department of Defense, assumed Fine’s position on the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee as well. A permanent chairperson for the committee has not yet been selected, and Michael Horowitz, the inspector general for the Justice Department, currently serves as acting chairman.

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  1. Luke Thompson

    I think there should be an investigation into the difference between the title and subheading used here versus the previous ones. After all, "no" would be a far more accurate answer here than it was on the May 21st "fact check," where "yes" would have been far more accurate. The nuance there was argued in the piece (and wanting). Biden lied when he said there were no IGs. Pelosi did, in fact, try to overturn Trump's travel ban. There's simply no room to argue for the difference in subheadings or responses.

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  2. Avatar photo
    Visibly

    The best Biden can do these days is to let Trump speak freely. Biden does not need to say a word, because sensible Americans would rather prefer a rock or a beloved dog as president, rather than Trump.

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  3. Avatar photo
    Pat Riot

    This article is misleading. It's also, once again, not a "fact check" because it's essentially criticizing a prediction of the future, not a black and white fact.

    Trump said, aloud, that we will *ignore* the Act's oversight provisions he dislikes, and it's quite logical to assume that those parts will be the ones which provide oversight that we *must have*.

    In other words, yes, Congress added oversight to the law, but Trump has vowed to basically ignore the law, which he has repeatedly done for other areas e.g. his tax returns.

    So maybe Biden could have said, "Trump is going to have no effective oversight or accountability for the CARES act" and that would have been a completely fair (and accurate) prediction as to what will happen.

    Fact checking shouldn't be "word parsing".

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    1. Luke Thompson

      Unless you can present an example here, you're simply lying by saying that this is misleading. Obviously, no one can honestly claim that there isn't oversight without an example of the oversight failing. And it's indisputable that there are IGs involved. The "oversight" provided by the media is certainly going to find any error, especially since they've managed to make it look like one of the best responses in the country was an error. So you have accountability there. The biggest mistake in this fact check is that it is nowhere near as ambiguous as any of the others that it's presented with far less evidence against Republican statements.

      You're actually just a troll, who should have his payment refunded and banned. (I'll even cover it, because I think he's paid by Media Matters or a similar group. Picking the same name as an NRO troll seems obvious.), As proof, you did not point out that any of the FIVE previous fact checks were actually misleading, as I've outlined on each. Your hatred of both conservatives and Trump precludes you from being taken seriously.

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      1. Luke Thompson

        I also think the four people who liked his comment should be investigated to be sure they're not part of the same system. It would seem like conspiracy mongering if MM didn't regularly publish pieces with clips of conservatives that would cost way more to hire people to watch every day than the Dispatch's price.

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