Politics

White House shirks Ways and Means deadline to provide Delphi documents

Matthew Boyle Investigative Reporter
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President Barack Obama’s White House failed to meet the deadline to provide documents related to the Delphi pension scandal to the House Ways and Means Committee, The Daily Caller has learned.

On Aug, 15, Ways and Means Committee chairman Rep. Dave Camp sent official document requests to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation director Josh Gotbaum and White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler. Camp asked for documents relating to Treasury and the White House’s involvement in the decision during the 2009 bailout to terminate the pension plans for 20,000 non-union Delphi salaried workers while topping off the pension plans for union workers.

Each government entity was to provide these documents to the committee by Sept. 7.

A committee spokesperson told TheDC that the Treasury Department and PBGC each provided some documents, but the White House failed to provide anything by the deadline. It’s unclear if the documents produced by Treasury and PBGC meet the requirements of the document request.

“Committee staff is currently reviewing the documents we received from Treasury and PBGC,” Ways and Means spokeswoman Sarah Swinehart. “At this point, we have not received anything from the White House.”

Ruemmler was instructed to provide “[a]ll records, including but not limited to electronic mail to or from PBGC, the Departments of Treasury, Labor and Commerce, and the Executive Office of the President of the United States” related to Delphi and “GM’s interest in Delphi.”

In recent weeks, TheDC has obtained and published internal Obama administration documents and communications showing that political officials from the White House and the Treasury Department drove the cutoff of the 20,000 non-union workers’ pension plans.

More internal emails have shown those same administration officials enriched their former firms and possibly themselves through the termination of those non-union pensions.

There are three congressional committees investigating what happened now, too, as the House Education and Workforce Committee renewed a late 2009 document request the administration has, to this date, ignored. The House oversight committee — at Ohio Republican Rep. Mike Turner’s persistence — has led a lengthy investigation as well.

White House spokesman Eric Schultz has not responded to TheDC’s request for comment.

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