During negotiations over the bailout bill, Congress was able to force the Administration to accept several oversight and accountability provisions on this massive bill. These provisions—an outside review panel and an Inspector General—were designed to take the decisions about the bailout out of the backrooms of the Department of Treasury and into the light of day.

But then the oversight plans fizzled. After passing the bailout, lawmakers immediately skipped town to run for re-election, leaving Treasury with virtually no oversight while spending unprecedented amounts of taxpayer dollars.

With nearly half of the bailout money doled out, Congress is belatedly trying to play catch-up in getting the oversight structure in place. Neil Barofsky, a U.S. Attorney, was nominated last week to be the Inspector General for the bailout. The Senate Banking Committee held a hearing on his nomination on Wednesday of this week, but it is unclear if they will get the nomination through the floor any time soon. In addition, Senators McCaskill (D-MO) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) are trying to get legislation through that clarifies the IG can review all aspects of the bailout, not just the shelved toxic asset acquisition portion, as well as ensure that he can staff his office quickly.

Congress also got around to filling the five member oversight panel this week. This group, too, is charged with overseeing the bailout, as well as reviewing the existing financial system and regulatory framework in order to make recommendations for improvement.

It shouldn’t take this long. Taxpayers have had to endure waste, fraud and abuse because of sluggish establishment of oversight. The Coalitional Provisional Authority (CPA) Inspector General (pre-cursor to the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction – SIGIR) wasn’t filled for a year after the CPA was created. Once established, SIGIR has proven invaluable at rooting out waste, conducting oversight and helping the reconstruction move forward. But much of their early work looked at the wild west of contracting and free flow of money that occurred prior to their arrival.

Equally telling was the experience after Hurricane Katrina. No special Inspector General was created, but the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General, Richard Skinner, quickly stood up a special operation and coordinated efforts with other agencies receiving Katrina relief funds to conduct robust oversight over the contracting operations. The joint IG effort was lead in the region by a separate Katrina oversight office and the team produced voluminous amounts of material and invaluable documentation to root out agency incompetence and waste, fraud, and abuse.

We can’t get back the last several weeks – when $290 billion of bailout funds were committed both to invest in dozens of banks and to further prop up American Insurance Group (AIG). Robust oversight and accountability could have helped assure taxpayers that these were the right banks to invest in, the banks were spending the money appropriately, that amounts invested were reasonable, and that taxpayers are likely to achieve the liquidity and stabilization goals that were used to justify these investments.

But by quickly confirming and staffing the new IG, and with active involvement by the congressional oversight panel, we can gain a better understanding of where Treasury decides to invest taxpayer money and why. Congress still has a chance to bring oversight and accountability to the bailout and help ensure that the next $410 billion of the bailout is used responsibly and isn’t wasted.