Bank of America, the nation’s largest bank, has told Congress and the Treasury Department that it can’t track how it spends $45 billion in taxpayer funds. 

But, as we previously reported, the bank’s lawyers recently contradicted those earlier claims, promising a federal judge in Manhattan last month that they would not use taxpayer dollars to pay a $33 million settlement to the SEC.

This promise led Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), a member of the House Financial Services Committee, to ask: How can the bank guarantee that it won’t pay the SEC from public funds if it can’t track how it spends those funds?

Last month, Grayson’s office contacted a BoA lobbyist for an explanation. At first, the lobbyist promised that he would respond “shortly,” according to Grayson’s staff. Then, in an e-mail on Friday Aug. 21, according to staff, the lobbyist promised Grayson an answer “by Monday at the latest.” Despite multiple follow-up requests, the lobbyist still has not responded.

Grayson’s staff has declined to give out the name of the lobbyist they’ve contacted.

In an interview today, BoA spokesman Scott Silvestri said the lobbyist would get in touch with Grayson’s office next week.

As for the SEC settlement, Silvestri said the bank doesn’t need to tap government funds to pay the fine. The payment would come from the bank’s $68.5 billion in revenue generated in the first half of this year, he said.

Silvestri declined to discuss how the lawyers’ promise to the federal judge could be reconciled with the bank’s earlier claims that the money can’t be tracked.

The bank told Treasury in May that it couldn’t follow the money it received through the government’s $700 billion bailout program because those funds “are part of our operating capital” and “cannot effectively be segregated.”

But the bank has been using the bailout money to lend, Silvestri said: “The taxpayers are being rewarded for their investment.” (BoA has published a breakdown of its lending here.) 

In an interview last week, Grayson said the “simplest way” to determine whether the bank is actually tracking the taxpayers’ investment would be to call Bank of America executives to testify under oath before Congress.

The judge in the SEC case could also demand a straight answer. BoA is still struggling to convince Judge Jed S. Rakoff to approve its settlement with the commission, which charged that the bank misled investors about billions of dollars in bonuses that were paid to executives of Merrill Lynch when the brokerage firm was acquired by BoA. Rakoff has repeatedly refused to approve the $33 million payout, which does not require the bank to admit wrongdoing, because he thought it was too small.

Rakoff told BoA and the SEC to address his objections by Sept. 9. Check back here for updates.