Retired Gen. Joseph Dunford is the leading candidate for Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to chair the five-member commission tasked with monitoring the Trump administration’s economic rescue effort amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Dunford must still go through an ethics review, according to multiple congressional sources, and no final decision has been made on his appointment.
Dunford, who stepped down last fall after four years as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would run the Congressional Oversight Commission, a body established in the $2 trillion law known as the CARES Act.
The commission is tasked with overseeing a $500 billion fund run by the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve. That fund is meant to shore up business, industries and local governments devastated by the coronavirus pandemic.
The chairmanship has remained vacant for three months since the passage of the law and as the other four members of the commission have been actively monitoring the implementation of the new programs.
Under the CARES Act, Pelosi and McConnell are authorized to jointly pick the commission’s chair. The other four members were picked individually by Pelosi, McConnell and their counterparts — House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer.
Pelosi selected Rep. Donna Shalala (D-Fla.), McCarthy picked Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.), McConnell picked Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Schumer picked Bharat Ramamurti, a former aide to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). But the chair has remained a drawn-out sticking point.
Dunford’s service as chairman of the Joint Chiefs under Barack Obama and Donald Trump would help bridge the rarely spanned divide between Pelosi and McConnell. With broad bipartisan support on Capitol Hill, Dunford could also help legitimize the work of the commission in an atmosphere of partisan distrust on both sides of the Capitol.
As a career military official with limited experience in financial policy, Dunford would likely also operate more as a high-profile manager with credibility among lawmakers than as an in-the-weeds participant in the grilling of Treasury and Fed officials.
Even without a chair, the four other commission members have issued two monthly reports and taken a thorough approach to overseeing the $500 billion rescue effort.
Despite the members’ disparate political views, they’ve successfully pressed the Fed and Treasury to explain their decisions in designing these programs — an array of efforts aimed at making it easier for businesses and municipalities to borrow more cheaply.
One program is targeted at large corporations that borrow money by issuing bonds, a second purchases loans from banks to midsize businesses that are too big for the Paycheck Protection Program, and a third offers loans to state and local governments. The congressional watchdog is also responsible for monitoring Treasury’s lending to airlines and businesses important to national security, though none of those loans have been issued yet.
The commissioners agreed in their latest report that the Fed and Treasury so far have done more to aid large corporations than smaller businesses or state and local governments.
A graduate of the U.S. Army Ranger School, Marine Corps Amphibious Warfare School, and the U.S. Army War College, Dunford also earned master’s degrees in Government from Georgetown University and in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
Zachary Warmbrodt contributed to this report.