Congress is out of session and out of town until late April, even as the coronavirus pandemic continues to exact a mounting death toll and inflict significant economic damage on the public. Federal lawmakers are already considering another round of legislative relief when they return, perhaps by filling the many voids in their last attempt. Some are also considering a more farsighted proposal: establishing a 9/11-style commission to study America’s response to the outbreak and determine exactly what went so calamitously wrong.

At least four proposals are currently circulating among House members on Capitol Hill—metaphorically, at least, since the actual building is largely desolate. They range from a bill by California’s Adam Schiff, a Democrat, that would essentially replicate the 9/11 Commission’s structure and powers, to a proposal by Illinois’s Rodney Davis, a Republican, that would not allow the commission to issue subpoenas for documents and testimony. Bipartisan teams of lawmakers have floated other versions that fall somewhere in the middle.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi also said last week she would support establishing a select committee to focus on the pandemic helmed by South Carolina’s Jim Clyburn. That committee, however, would be more forward-looking than a commission. “We’re not going to be looking back on what the president may or may not have done back before this crisis hit,” he said in a CNN interview on Sunday. “The crisis is with us.” At the same time, Pelosi indicated that she would prefer that any proposed commission pass with bipartisan support.

Last month, I suggested three subjects of inquiry for any future commission to study: why the United States failed so badly on coronavirus testing in January, February, and March; why the U.S. public health system wasn’t better prepared for the pandemic’s arrival; and whether Congress took the right steps to alleviate the social and economic fallout that the pandemic itself—and efforts to contain it—would have on the nation. Since then, a few additional issues have arisen where a commission’s scrutiny and judgment would be welcomed. Such a body should be armed with all of the same powers and privileges held by the 9/11 Commission—and nothing less.

In recent weeks, news outlets have shed more light on the original three topics. A series of leadership and institutional failures at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration prevented the rollout of nationwide testing for months, thereby missing a crucial window of opportunity to stem the virus’s spread in its early days. The Department of Health and Human Services under Secretary Alexander Azar, along with the White House’s middle and upper ranks, struggled to overcome bureaucratic hurdles to coordinate the federal response. Trump himself first received intelligence briefings on the dangers of the virus in January but publicly and privately downplayed them for months out of political self-interest.