(Bloomberg) -- House Republicans are launching an investigation into the Biden administration’s management of hundreds of billion of dollars from Democrats’ climate bill and other marquee legislation, warning the funding is vulnerable to waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement.

The probe by the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability seeks documents and other communications about how the Energy Department plans to safeguard an influx of billions of dollars. They cite a report by the agency’s inspector general that warned about fraud and mismanagement following an infusion of cash from Congress that more than doubled funding for the agency to a historic $100 billion.

“Democrats’ spending bills allocated billions of dollars to DOE’s budget without proper mechanisms in place to oversee the magnitude of additional dollars,” the committee said in a statement.  

In addition to Democrats’ landmark Inflation Reduction Act, which appropriated the Energy Department more than $35 billion, as well as hundreds of billion of dollars in authority for loan guarantees, the agency received an addition $64 billion from bipartisan transportation legislation signed into law in 2021, according to a November 2022 Energy Department inspector general report.  The agency’s previous annual budget was $45 billion, the report said.

“We seek documents and information to understand the Department’s plan to ensure proper oversight of its new and expanding programs and protect our country’s energy security,” Representative James Comer, the Kentucky Republican who leads the Oversight Committee, wrote in his letter Wednesday to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. 

 

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