From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov

Transcript for: Comptroller General Testifies to U.S. House on COVID-19

Description: In his June 26, 2020 testimony to the U.S. House of
Representatives, U.S. Comptroller General Gene Dodaro discusses GAO's
first report in response to the CARES Act, which requires GAO to report
on federal spending in response to COVID-19. The report includes
information and some recommendations on topics such as small business
loans, viral testing, and stimulus payments.

Related GAO Works: GAO-20-625: COVID-19: Opportunities to Improve
Federal Response and Recovery Efforts; GAO20-659T: COVID-19:
Opportunities to Improve Federal Response and Recovery Efforts

Released: July 2020
 

[Gene Dodaro:] Thank you very much, Chairman. Good morning to you,
Ranking Member Scalise, members of the subcommittee. I'm very pleased to
be here today to talk about our first comprehensive assessment of the
set of legislation that Congress swiftly passed. The administration's
been working hard to implement. We determined that the first two months
after the legislation was passed there was $1.2 trillion of assistance
provided in the form of almost $700 billion in direct spending and over
$500 billion in loan guarantees. Now, this assistance was accompanied by
a lot of dedication and agility by various segments of our society. We
had heroic efforts made by our healthcare workers across the country.
There were significant efforts put forward by the federal workforce to
implement this legislation. State and local governments and others made
valuable contributions and continue to do so. Now, with regard to the
federal agencies, they gave a high priority given the urgency of the
healthcare needs and the severe economic downturn to move swiftly to
allocate the funds, as we point out in our report. And, there were
tradeoffs that were made, and our report's designed to help them make
some midcourse corrections with regard to those tradeoffs. But, as a
consequence, we've made good progress in distributing the money, but
only limited progress in ensuring and meeting the transparency and
accountability goals. Now, our report provides a very comprehensive
assessment across the entire federal government, but this morning my
opening comments, I'll just focus on those areas that I think our
initial recommendations for improvement focus on. First is the PPP
program. I agree that they made swift allocations, standing up a
nationwide program and distributing the money, but there were some
issues that I think need to be attended to very quickly. And so, our
recommendation, there's a lot of confusion with the program. It was, you
know, implemented with a stream of frequently asked questions and
guidance, and so there's some confusion that still remains with the
program. But, all being said, they need an oversight plan to ensure that
the funds are safeguarded. There's already some indications of fraud in
the program. I'm pleased to report that Administrator Carranza called me
last night, agreed that they'd just give us the information that we
needed in order to go forward. So, we're in the process of finalizing
arrangements for that. I also offered to help them as they designed
their oversight and monitoring plans, and she accepted my agreement. On
the unemployment insurance area, the states are struggling to implement
the program because of antiquated systems, need for additional staffing.
However, there's a potential problem with overlap between unemployment
benefits and employees who may have received aid under the Paycheck
Protection Program that we're not paying people twice. We recommend they
give guidance. They agreed they're going to give guidance. At IRS, the
Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration identified 1.4 million
payments of $1.4 billion dollars of aid that was provided to deceased.
We recommend IRS take more measures to get that money back. They've done
so. We also recommend that the Congress give treasury the authority to
have the master desk file from the Social Security Administration so
they could prevent these payments from being made, not just here but
across the range of the federal government's activities. We also
recommend that the Congress require the Department of Transportation to
develop a national aviation security plan for communicable diseases. We
recommended this in 2015. So far, there's not a plan because of
bureaucratic wrangling about who's responsible for developing it. I
think Congress needs to give clear direction in this regard. The vessel
in which this virus was spread around the world very quickly came
through our air transportation system. We'll always be behind the curve
unless we have a national aviation security plan that's coordinated, and
it was  some international norms to protect safety in that area. So, Mr.
Chairman, as I conclude my statement, I want to assure this committee
that we're going to continue to focus on this, to meet our statutory
responsibilities, to report every two months. We also have about 40
audits underway now, dozens of others planned for specific areas. So,
we're pleased that you took time to focus on our report, and we look
forward to working with the Congress and the administration to make sure
that these programs are effectively and efficiently implemented for the
benefit of the American people and our economy. Thank you very much.