Back in March, the Coronavirus Aid,
Relief, and Economic Security Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by
President Trump. [1]
This legislation released “more than $2 trillion to deal with the coronavirus
crisis,” but “an oversight commission intended” by the legislation “to keep
track of how the money is spent remains without a leader.” [2]
Why is this? “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,
D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., have not agreed on
a chair, leaving the commission rudderless as the federal government pumps
unprecedented sums into the economy.” [3] The result
is that “the panel’s remaining members can still do some oversight work, but
cannot hire staff or set up office space. The four members have not met as a
group since the economic rescue law was passed by Congress and signed by
President Donald Trump in late March.” [4]
The purpose of the panel is to “watch over
$500 billion in lending to distressed industries backed by the Treasury
Department and Federal Reserve. The Fed has said the money can be leveraged to
offer more than $2 trillion in loans to U.S. companies.” [5] But because
our political leaders can’t agree on a chairperson, “the panel’s activity has
been reduced to tweets and letters by individual commissioners and a May 8
statement in which it pledged to publish a required report ‘soon.’” [6]
Now the reason why Speaker Pelosi and
Majority Leader McConnell can’t agree on a chairperson is obviously because
they are members of different political parties, and the parties can’t work
together on anything. At all. So now there is going to be no effective
oversight of trillions of dollars being lent to private companies.
Political parties aren’t in the
Constitution. The Founding Fathers originally didn’t want political parties to
emerge, but soon fell under the party thrall. This latest disgraceful episode yields
us yet another reason, among a catalogue of reasons, of why political parties
are a public nuisance and must be gotten rid of before our nation is reduced to
utter imbecility.
