Congress Ignored Critical Bailout Oversight

Congress Ignored Critical Bailout Oversight

Congress Ignored Critical Bailout Oversight

Despite the fact that Congress wrote more than one hundred pages about oversight in the bailout bill, they left a gaping hole.

Facebook
Twitter
Email
Flipboard
Pocket

In this illuminating video, the American News Project looks back at the $700 billion dollar bailout authorized by Congress earlier this year and at the loopholes that have allowed for virtually zero oversight of how funds are spent. Though Congress put in more than a hundred pages of oversight conditions, much of the legislation has proved toothless. The legislation fails to require that organizations receiving funds report back to Congress on exactly how they spend the money they receive. As such, firms can spend the tax-payer funded cash infusions on anything from bolstering their balance sheets to paying creditors to giving executives bonuses. As a law professor and expert on government transparency at Georgetown University put it, in crafting a bailout of such immense scale with such a glaring loophole, Congress acted with either huge “incompetence” or preposterous “venality.”

Marissa Colón-Margolies

Check out more great Nation videos on our YouTube channel.

We cannot back down

We now confront a second Trump presidency.

There’s not a moment to lose. We must harness our fears, our grief, and yes, our anger, to resist the dangerous policies Donald Trump will unleash on our country. We rededicate ourselves to our role as journalists and writers of principle and conscience.

Today, we also steel ourselves for the fight ahead. It will demand a fearless spirit, an informed mind, wise analysis, and humane resistance. We face the enactment of Project 2025, a far-right supreme court, political authoritarianism, increasing inequality and record homelessness, a looming climate crisis, and conflicts abroad. The Nation will expose and propose, nurture investigative reporting, and stand together as a community to keep hope and possibility alive. The Nation’s work will continue—as it has in good and not-so-good times—to develop alternative ideas and visions, to deepen our mission of truth-telling and deep reporting, and to further solidarity in a nation divided.

Armed with a remarkable 160 years of bold, independent journalism, our mandate today remains the same as when abolitionists first founded The Nation—to uphold the principles of democracy and freedom, serve as a beacon through the darkest days of resistance, and to envision and struggle for a brighter future.

The day is dark, the forces arrayed are tenacious, but as the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

I urge you to stand with The Nation and donate today.

Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

Ad Policy
x