An independent government watchdog, charged with overseeing the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, will testify before Congress today. His basic message: though government transparency has improved slightly under the Obama Administration, TARP remains almost entirely opaque.

Neil Barofsky, the Special Inspector General over the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), will testify to Congress that the government’s “basic attitude” on the transparency and accountability of the program “remains a significant frustration.”

“TARP largely remains a program in which taxpayers are not being told what most of the TARP recipients are doing with their money and will not be told the full details of how their money is being invested,” Barofsky will say.

Treasury Department officials are beginning to release the results of TARP loans (i.e. total investments and returns). Details about how the money was invested by recipients, however, is absent from the report. Such a move ignores the recommendations of watchdogs.

The Treasury Department soon will start to report more details about how TARP recipients are using the money, including their total investments and their repayments of debt obligations. The department will not report on how specific firms allocate funds. “We remain puzzled as to why Treasury refuses to adopt our recommendation to report on each TARP recipient’s use of TARP funds,” Barofsky will say.

It is unclear at this point whether or not congress can further compel the Treasury Department to follow Mr. Barofsky’s recommendations.