A Fighting Chance

We submitted the report, and then we made it public.

Another of my former students, Caleb Weaver, discovered that the Senate had a full setup for making video recordings. (It came complete with fake backgrounds—the first question I was asked on the set was, “Do you want the fake plant or the fake window?”) I made a four-minute recording (fake window included) that introduced our panel’s mission and provided an overview of the report. We uploaded it to YouTube. We also set up a website, posted the report so that anyone could read it, and created a portal that would allow people to share their stories with the panel.

YouTube and an interactive website didn’t sound much like a Congressional Oversight Panel, or at least that wasn’t how most people thought a panel ought to operate in 2008. But we figured that if our goal was to be a watchdog for the American people, then we should involve the American people as much as possible.

Once we set up the website, e-mails started pouring in. We heard from people who had lost their homes, people who were desperate for financial help, people who were frustrated about what was happening to our country. I was a little surprised by the outpouring—after all, we started out as a pretty obscure government panel. But this crisis was personal. People felt like their whole world was unraveling. Maybe our report gave them a voice. Maybe it asked some of the same questions they would have asked if they had the chance.

I had hoped our report wouldn’t get caught up in any kind of political crosswind, but that’s not how it worked out. In the two weeks our panel had to write the report, we circulated drafts, had conference calls, swapped e-mails, and agreed to compromises—all in the hope that we could deliver a unanimous report. But it wasn’t to be. Congressman Hensarling voted against it.

So our first report was signed by all three Democratic appointees, with no Republican support.

I started to understand that oversight was going to be hard, every step of the way.





Shirts and Skins

On December 10, the day the first COP report came out, I had an appointment with our dissenter, Congressman Hensarling. I figured he had invited me to his office on Capitol Hill to discuss what he thought COP should be doing differently.

Early that morning, I got lost—again—this time in the basement of the Capitol. Michael Negron, another of my former students, was with me. He had been a navy officer before law school, and he was a lot less likely to get rattled by a little thing like getting lost.

The congressional office buildings are linked by big underground tunnels and small shuttle trains that curve in odd directions, and the offices are numbered in ways that make no sense to me. We turned one way and then another, and finally Michael announced that we were almost there. Go, Navy!

Hensarling’s office was already open for business, and the congressman came out quickly to greet us. Handshakes all around, and Michael and I joined Hensarling and one of his staffers in his private office. I perched on the edge of a sofa, with my coat across my lap.

After Hensarling’s dissent on the first report, I hoped I could find out what he wanted to do differently. Maybe he had strong views about what we should investigate. Maybe he had an idea for how we could monitor where the TARP money went. Maybe he wanted to put more pressure on Treasury to show progress in slowing foreclosures. Maybe he wanted to talk about the second, staggering bailout for Citibank—and Treasury’s willingness to lie to us. The list of issues our panel might work on was growing by the day, and I didn’t know what priorities the congressman wanted to address.

After giving me a big smile, Hensarling dived right in. He said something along the lines of “I want to know your plans for dividing up the budget.”

Dividing our budget?

The congressman explained that he wanted to know what portion of COP funding I planned to allocate to the Republicans and what portion I planned to keep for the Democrats.

I reminded him that we were all working on the same investigations and the same reports. Congress hadn’t specified the exact budget, but they were willing to give us the funds we needed to get the work done—and that’s what we’d do. I told him that I felt strongly about one thing: There’s no money for one side versus the other. This shouldn’t be a my-party-your-party exercise. We should work together with one nonpartisan staff.