Financial crisis panel off to a slow start

WASHINGTON, April 6 (UPI) -- Members of a congressional panel investigating the recent U.S. financial crisis said limited time and a small budget had affected their wide-ranging inquiry.

Phil Angelides, chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, said the panel has a Dec. 15 deadline to produce a report and an $8 million budget that is far less than the $38 million spent on an investigation of the fall of Lehman Brothers, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

"We are limited by time," said the commission's vice president, Bill Thomas,

Another member of the commission, Keith Hennessey, a former economic adviser to President George W. Bush, said, "We lost a fair amount of time on the front end."

Hennessey questioned why hiring a staff "took so long." One investigator, Martin Biegelman, quit his post due to the months it took for the panel's executive director, J. Thomas Green, to hire 49 staff members, the Times said.

Green was hired in September.

Commission members said Thomas and Angelides bickered over whether to release preliminary reports before the Dec. 15 deadline. Others said Angelides was focused more on public hearings than in-depth investigations.

"The proof will be in the outcome," said panel member Heather Murren, a political independent.