Clyburn: House coronavirus panel ‘will be forward-looking,’ not review Trump’s early response
House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn said on Sunday that a new congressional panel intended to oversee the distribution of coronavirus relief funds “will be forward-looking” and not probe President Donald Trump’s widely criticized initial response to the ongoing public health crisis.
“My understanding is that this committee will be forward-looking,” Clyburn told CNN’s “State of the Union.”
The remarks from the No. 3 House Democrat come after Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on Thursday that he would lead a special bipartisan House committee tasked with providing oversight of the administration as it doles out more than $2 trillion in federal aid allocated in the recent stimulus package.
Pelosi emphasized that the committee “is about the here and now” and would not take the place of another potential panel, akin to the 9/11 Commission, meant to perform a comprehensive review of the outbreak’s origins in the United States.
But Clyburn’s reinforcement of Pelosi’s message and description of the committee’s mission is likely to further rankle some House Democrats who have called for more aggressive scrutiny of the federal government’s early management of the novel coronavirus’ rapid spread across the country.
Those efforts by the administration were marred by a failure to mount a comprehensive testing operation and muddled by Trump’s repeated attempts to downplay the coronavirus’ threat to Americans.
“We’re not going to be looking back on what the president may or may not have done back before this crisis hit. The crisis is with us,” Clyburn said Sunday. “The American people are now out of work. Millions of them out of work. The question is whether or not the money that’s appropriated will go to support them and their families or whether or not this money will end up in the pockets of a few profiteers.”
Despite the limited scope of Clyburn’s committee, lawmakers have introduced at least two measures seeking a deeper probe of the nation’s fight against the coronavirus within the past week.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, proposed on Wednesday a 25-member bipartisan commission that would conduct a sweeping 18-month investigation, and Reps. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) and John Katko (R-N.Y.) introduced a bill on Thursday calling for an inquiry into the government’s preparation for and handling of the pandemic.
The 9/11 Commission was established in November 2002, a little more than a year after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The bipartisan panel, chaired by former Gov. Tom Kean of New Jersey, a Republican, and former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.), issued a report in 2004 that, among other things, criticized government intelligence failures.
