So seriously does Barofsky take his oversight duties that, as a Washington Post profile noted in March, "he refuses to eat with senior administration officials in the [Treasury] building's executive dining room to maintain his independence."
And the attack:
Most significant of all, and obviously due to Barofsky's truly independent oversight efforts, the Obama administration is now attempting to induce the Justice Department to issue a ruling that Barofsky's office is not independent at all -- but rather, is subject to, and under the supervision of, the authority of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. By design, such a ruling would completely gut Barofsky's ability to compel transparency and exercise real oversight over how Treasury is administering TARP, since it would make him subordinate to one of the very officials whose actions Congress wanted him to oversee: the Treasury Secretary's. Barofsky has, quite rightly, protested the administration's efforts to destroy his independence, and has done so with increasing assertiveness as the administration's war on his oversight activities has increased. Why would an administration vowing a New Era of Transparency wage war on a watchdog whose only mission is to ensure transparency and accountability in these massive financial programs?
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