WASHINGTON—Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin defended his decision to allow a suite of emergency lending programs to expire at the end of the year against criticism from Democrats who said he had misinterpreted the law that enabled them.
At a House oversight hearing on Wednesday, Mr. Mnuchin said the $2 trillion Cares Act pandemic relief bill that Congress approved on a bipartisan basis in March didn’t allow him to extend five emergency loan programs. The Fed and Treasury had established those programs with some of the $454 billion Congress had made available in the law.
“This was not a political decision. I was merely implementing the Cares Act,” Mr. Mnuchin said, echoing comments he made on Tuesday before the Senate Banking Committee.
Mr. Mnuchin also said that the programs weren’t needed anymore and that the money he hadn’t approved for the programs, as well as other funds that wouldn’t be needed, would be better used on another pandemic relief bill.
Mr. Mnuchin said he had explained his reasoning and underscored that his decision wasn’t politically motivated in a recent phone call with Janet Yellen, who is President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee to serve as the next Treasury secretary. He said she didn’t express an opinion during the call.
