Schumer Picks Top Warren Campaign Staffer for Panel Overseeing Coronavirus Aid Distribution
A longtime aide to one of the senate’s fiercest critics of American capitalism will be on the panel to oversee a $500 billion loan fund intended to help America’s businesses recover from the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Monday announced he was appointing Bharat Ramamurti, who had worked for Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts before joining her ill-fated presidential campaign, to serve on the panel, according to the Washington Examiner.
Ramamurti was deputy policy director for economic policy in Warren’s campaign and was the senator’s senior counsel on banking and economic policy.
“Mr. Ramamurti brings a wealth of oversight experience and expertise,” Schumer said.
Ramamurti is the first person to be appointed to the panel.
The oversight panel was included in the legislation that created the $2.2 trillion coronavirus economic relief package Congress passed last month.
The leaders of the majority and minority in each branch of Congress get to name one person each. The fifth individual will be chosen jointly by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Pelosi said she and McConnell have begun discussing who might fill that spot, according to The Hill.
“I spoke to Mitch about that because he and I have to agree on who that fifth person is. And we set sort of our criteria as to how that would be. He gave me a name, not a name but an impression about who he might do for his one. So we’ve had those conversations,” she said.
The panel will report on how the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve administer the funds. It is separate from the House panel that Pelosi plans to create to provide Democrat-led oversight of the program.
Warren was a critic of how the bailout for businesses was structured.
“You can’t just take $450 billion, hand it over to the secretary of treasury and, say, hand it out to your closest friends on a no-strings-attached basis. No, there has to be strings,” she told NPR in a March interview.
Warren claimed that the rules of the fund are too loose, and said President Donald Trump could even steer money to himself.
“Well, the fund, as it stands right now, has no meaningful requirement that companies maintain payroll or benefits for their employees, no serious restrictions on stock buybacks, no requirements to reduce executive pay and no ongoing oversight,” she said, describing one version of the plan to create the fund.
“You know, in fact, as you read this, it sounds like Trump hotel properties, like Mar-a-Lago, could receive huge bags of cash and then fire their workers if Steve Mnuchin decides he wants to do a real solid for his boss using taxpayer dollars.”
Oversight of the program has already become controversial after Schumer objected to Trump’s nomination of White House attorney Brian Miller, who was an inspector general for the General Services Administration, to be the inspector general of the $500 billion fund.
Schumer said the fund’s inspector general “should be independent, without fear or favor,” and said it’s “dubious” Miller can do that having come from the Trump White House.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa has said the GOP seeks strong oversight for the fund, according to NBC.
“Now, more than ever, it’s critical that we ensure that this money is used as intended. The administration, the special inspector general for pandemic relief, the Pandemic Relief Accountability Committee and all of us in Congress must keep a watchful eye on these programs to guard against fraud, waste and mismanagement,” Grassley said last month regarding the passage of the CARES Act.
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