Republicans begin probing COVID spending
Moskowitz highlights waste in federal pandemic efforts — under Trump
U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz, who ran Florida’s emergency response effort for the first 14 months of the COVID pandemic, said Wednesday the federal response under then-President Donald Trump wasted lots of taxpayer money.
Moskowitz, a Broward-Palm Beach county Democrat, pointed to Trump-era practices at the first committee hearing as a member of the House Oversight Committee.
The hearing was called by Republicans flexing their muscle as the new majority party in the House. Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said the hearing was “a first step in examining the massive waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in
COVID-relief programs.”
It was a partisan exercise. If one party controls a chamber of Congress, and the other party controls the White House, investigations are inevitable, and Republicans have promised to highlight issues they think will politically hurt the president.
U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, one of the highest-profile congressional Republicans, said “a lot of our taxpayers’ hardearned dollars [were] spent on things that don’t even make sense.”
She wondered, for example, “how much COVID cash was given to abortion?”, “How much money, COVID cash went towards diversity, equity and inclusion or racism issues?”, and “How much cash went to CRT?”
The witness she directed that toward, Comptroller General Gene Dodaro of the U.S. Government Accountability Office wasn’t even familiar with CRT. It stands for critical race theory, a legal theory that views racism as embedded in American institutions.
Moskowitz may know more about the way the government responded to the pandemic than all the other members of the House Oversight Committee combined.
He was Florida’s emergency management director from January 2019 until May 2021. He implemented Florida’s COVID response, including the search for hard-to-find personal protective equipment, and the rollout of vaccination efforts in the state — as the only Democrat running a state agency for Gov. Ron DeSantis.
He said any examination needs to look at the entirety of the pandemic.
“COVID was not a two-year event. It was a three-year event and I am more than happy to join with the majority and look at the fraud and abuse that went on in the last two years in COVID-related programs. But I think it’s only fair for us to also look at the beginning of the disaster and the amount of government waste that existed by the federal government,” Moskowitz said.
He acknowledged that waste is “not as sexy as fraud and abuse” for congressional hearings, but is nonetheless important.
He said $18 billion was spent by the Trump administration for early procurement of personal protective equipment and other materials early in the pandemic, and $10 billion didn’t go through normal procurement processes,
instead awarded via sole-source contacts.
Moskowitz said states that needed supplies needed to turn to Trump’s inner circle within the White House to plead their cases.