While Washington's focus has been on the health care reform, too little attention has been given to investigations into the financial crisis that led to the current recession that has caused so much pain and hardship.

The federal government's response to the financial crisis has consisted of bailouts for giant financial and automobile companies and hundreds of billions of dollars of stimulus spending.

Too little attention has focused on examining how the financial crisis happened and how to prevent it from happening again. There is little evidence of the government pursuing those people who committed fraud or engaged in other illegal activities.

At least one member of Congress, Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, wants to change the climate of inaction.

Kaptur wants Congress to provide funding for another 1,000 agents for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to pursue criminal charges related to the financial crisis.

University of Texas economist James Galbraith argues that the current economic crisis "was the product of wide-scale criminal fraud," similar to the criminality linked to the Savings and Loan scandal of the 1980s. Following that crisis, thousands of cases were referred to the FBI for investigation and prosecution. By early 1992, more than 1,000 people had been charged with crimes related to S&L crisis. Convictions were won in 90 percent of the cases.

The current financial crisis has seen nothing like that. It could be that major efforts are under way, but not yet public. Or, it could be that the poweful financial industry has influenced Congress to discourage investigations.

Another theory is that the FBI is overextended, with so much effort going into antiterrorism. It's been estimated that following the 9/11 attacks, about 2,000 FBI agents were switched from white-collar crime to terrorism-related work.

That might have been appropriate, but allowing criminal activity that contributed to the financial crisis to go unpunished is wrong, and fails to create much deterrence.

Congress should quickly approve the additional FBI agents to pursue white-collar crimes, along with more Justice Department investigators to target those who contributed to the financial crisis. The money necessary to fund these efforts should come from a small portion of the billions of dollars of unspent stimulus money, most of which is being viewed with increasing suspicion.

There reportedly are 1,500 active investigations involving AIG, Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But the fraud and abuse was so widespread that more should be done targeting mortgage brokers, investment bankers, property assessors and investment rating agencies.

Even though some contributing actions were merely unethical, and not illegal, the public deserves to know what role Congress played by relaxing lending standards at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as the active efforts by Congress and the White House to avoid regulation of the complex financial products known as derivatives, which investor Warren Buffett called "financial weapons of mass destruction."

Some government officials warned in the late 1990s of the dangers posed by derivatives, but Wall Street interests within the Clinton and Bush administrations rejected efforts to impose government oversight.

Kaptur notes that "with the largest transfer of wealth from the American people to the biggest banks in this country, every committee of Congress would be involved in hearings." But that's not happening.

To be fair, there have been some hearings. And, a 10-member bipartisan commission, called the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, began work in late September, more than a year after the crisis started.

It might be a matter of the wheels of justice turning slowly, but to Kaptur, it's more than that — and more troubling. She argues that Congress has failed to hold the banks accountable because the big commercial banks and Wall Street interests have too much power in Washington.

To most Americans, that appears to be the case. Only tough actions against abusive bankers, aggressive prosecution of financial fraud at all levels and also some action on the "too big to fail" issue will show Americans that the financial industry has not used lobbying and campaign contributions to control Congress.