An inspector general overseeing billions of dollars in pandemic aid says that his office is running out of operating funds and could be forced to start winding down some investigations in March and close its doors as soon as July.
In a series of letters this week, Brian D. Miller, the Special Inspector General for Pandemic Recovery, told lawmakers that his office faces a “terminal budget crisis” unless Congress provides more funding soon.
“The covid-19 pandemic is not over, and Congress’s unprecedented investment in the American economy has been prey to unprecedented levels of crime and fraud,” Miller wrote in a letter obtained by The Washington Post. “Without such funding, for the first time in history, an inspector general office will close prematurely for want of funding.”
Congress created SIGPR with $25 million in funding as part of the first pandemic relief package, the $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2020. Trump appointed Miller to the office, which has a five-year mandate to oversee a group of pandemic relief programs (though which programs exactly has been a matter of some dispute).
One effort SIGPR oversees is the Main Street Lending Program operated by the Federal Reserve, which made $600 billion in loan facilities available to employers struggling during the pandemic. SIGPR is currently monitoring more than $22 billion in outstanding loans and assistance provided by the program and has opened more than two dozen cases to investigate possible fraud.
The bottom line: Congress and its various watchdogs have their hands full overseeing more than $5 trillion in spending authorized in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. But lawmakers have been unable to pass a spending package for 2022, jeopardizing new funding for SIGPR, which could be forced to close its doors if Congress fails to act.
