House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) has asked federal agencies under his jurisdiction—including the NCUA, to keep communications with his panel confidential even if members of the public request them under the Freedom of Information Act.
Hensarling sent the letters to several agencies, including the Treasury Department and the CFPB. The Associated Press and Buzzfeed first reported on the letters to several agencies.
NCUA Public Affairs Specialist John Fairbanks confirmed that the agency received a similar letter, but declined to release it. He also declined to release the agency’s response.
“The agency makes a decision whether to provide requested documents, including congressional correspondence, under FOIA on a case-by-case basis,” he said. That decision is based on the statute and relevant case law, he said.
In his letter to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Hensarling wrote that the committee wants the communications to remain confidential in an effort to ensure the “unfettered flow of information necessary to assist the Committee in performing its important legislative and oversight functions.”
Financial Services Committee spokesman Jeff Emerson said that the letters were sent based on advice from the House General Counsel’s office. He said that other committees have sent similar letters to agencies to remind them that such communications are “congressional records, not agency records.”
Congress is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.
“Doing this protects not only the ability of congressional committees to conduct oversight and investigations of the executive branch but also whistleblowers who come to committees with important information,” Emerson said. “They are sometimes named in communications between committees and agencies and they must be protected.”
The letters appear to have inflamed already tense partisan tension on the committee.
“For years Chairman Hensarling has made intrusive and aggressive demands of agencies, forcing for example the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to produce over 150,000 pages of documents since 2013” said committee ranking Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) “And any time he’s called on it, he says that Congress has the right to conduct oversight. And while Congress does have that right, it is the height of hypocrisy for him to take such extraordinary measures to shield himself from the oversight of the American public. People should ask themselves: what is he trying to hide?”
In a letter to Waters, Hensarling said that the Democrat knew about the agency letters for a month and did not object to the policy until they were made public. He said the letters were written based on the advice of the House Office of General Counsel.
He said that Democrats have adopted similar policies in the past.
