Report finds Treasury Department has hardly spent any of its $500 billion fund to help businesses

A Congressional Oversight Commission report released Monday finds that the Treasury Department has barely spent any of the $500 billion fund meant to assist local governments and businesses.

Both the Congressional Oversight Commission and the Treasury fund were created by the $2 trillion CARES Act in March. The fund will help large and small businesses, as well as cities and states, and the commission was formed to oversee how that money is being used. The 17-page report released Monday is the commission's first.

The report found that so far, only one of the five lending facilities created by the Treasury Department to operate through the Federal Reserve — the Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility, which will purchase corporate debt — has received funding. There is $46 billion set aside for the airline industry, but none of that money has been distributed, and the Main Street Lending Program, created to assist small and medium-size businesses, has already changed its criteria for participants, a move Democrats say is meant to benefit oil and gas firms, The Washington Post reports.

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Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will appear before the commission on Tuesday, and are expected to field questions about when the facilities will get up and running. Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Penn.), a member of the commission, told the Post that if the funding "doesn't get out in a timely fashion, it's not going to achieve the goal behind its creation."