Hi folks. To no one's surprise, the House Republican leadership in the House is trying to score cheap and shameless political points by staging
a sham Iraq debate this week. I just came out of a press conference with Leader Nancy Pelosi, Representatives Jim Clyburn, John Tierney, and others in which we talked about how the White House and the Republican Leadership are deliberately undermining efforts to fight corruption, fraud, and waste in the reconstruction effort in Iraq.
For last five and half years, this Republican leadership has abdicated its constitutionally mandated responsibility to provide accountability and oversight in our government. The collapse of FEMA during Hurricane Katrina showed us
the results.
Sadly, top Republicans have also worked to actively sabotage accountability, transparency, and honesty in government, both at home and abroad.
Last year, Republicans intentionally incapacitated the Ethics Committee. And today, they are sabotaging accountability in Iraq.
Rampant corruption and incompetence in Iraq contracting have prolonged our mission there and cost lives. In fact, minimal oversight and the mismanagement of funds have resulted in unfinished projects involving Iraq's water supply, electrical capacity, and oil production - infrastructure crucial to reconstruction of Iraq:
Before the war, Baghdad residents received an average of 16 to 24 hours of electricity a day. They currently receive 3.7, the report said. Outside the capital, however, the situation has improved to 10.2 hours per day from four to eight hours before the war.
While Iraq produced 2.6 million barrels per day of crude oil before the war, it now produces 2.1 million, the report said.
And 8.25 million Iraqis currently have access to potable water, compared with 12.9 million before the war. Reconstruction officials had aimed to bring potable water to 23.4 million citizens.
But despite that - or perhaps because of it - this Republican leadership is now undermining the only existing source of accountability for the Iraq reconstruction program: the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), Stuart Bowen.
Last year Mr. Bowen released a report showing 9 billion dollars missing reconstruction funds. Recently, Mr. Bowen, a former Bush lawyer, released a report documenting 72 ongoing investigations into cases of fraud, waste, and abuse. And as a result of his diligence, House Republicans have placed the Inspector General and his staff in the dog house, rewarding Mr. Bowen for his hard work by stripping him of his oversight authority on new reconstruction funds, and effectively taking him off the job.
The Bush Administration and the Republican Congress now apparently believe that the SIGIR office has been doing too good of a job. When authoring the Iraq supplemental spending bill passed by Congress on Monday, Republicans quietly reclassified 1.9 billion dollars in new reconstruction funds - all so that the Inspector General no longer has the jurisdiction to do his job. The just-passed Iraq supplemental bill (H.R. 4939) appropriates $1.7 billion for Iraq reconstruction, but designates it as "Economic Support Funds" administered by the Department of State (through US AID). This re-designation blocks SIGIR from overseeing the money. Here's how the Wall Street Journal recently reported it:
By law, Mr. Bowen can oversee only relief and reconstruction funds. Because the new money technically comes from a different source, Mr. Bowen, who has 55 auditors on the ground in Iraq, will be barred from overseeing how the new money is spent. Instead, the funds will be overseen by the State Department's inspector general office, which has a much smaller staff in Iraq and warned in testimony to Congress in the fall that it lacked the resources to continue oversight activities in Iraq.
During the markup of the supplemental, Appropriations Committee Democrats tried to re-designate the money so the SIGIR would continue to have oversight on these Iraq funds but Republican rejected their vote.
Instead, they have placed a group of State Department officials in charge, officials who have already testified before Congress that they do not have the resources to conduct proper oversight of reconstruction activities in Iraq.
This isn't just the ordinary negligence to which Americans have become accustomed under this Republican Leadership. This is a clear attempt by the White House and the Republican Congressional Leadership to deliberately undermine accountability in Iraq - even though the lives of American troops and Iraqi civilians hang in the balance.
If this Congress had created a Truman Commission to oversee the war effort, as Democrats such as my friend John Tierney have been calling for, we could have avoided this situation.
This deliberate Republican effort to eliminate accountability in Iraq would be tantamount to malpractice in any other profession. Yet, Republicans want taxpayers to continue spending millions of dollars each day in Iraq - without any idea of where it is going or if it is being used effectively.
That is simply not acceptable. America needs new leadership in the United States Congress.
I will lurk around the thread for next 30 minutes to comment or answer questions in this thread. Thanks so much again for making me feel welcome to your wonderful community. - LMS