Harper's has published an
interview with former White House Budget Official Gordan Adams that sets forth in disturbing detail how absolutely out of control the spending process has gotten for the Iraq War.
First, the numbers.
So far:
$437 billion [has been spent] on Iraq, Afghanistan, and other parts of the war on terror since 2001
Over seventy percent (70%) of this amount has been spent on Iraq alone, which I calculate to equal at least $306 billion, or more than a thousand dollars for every man, woman, and child in the United States.
Moreover:
The Congressional Research Service estimates conservatively that we might spend another $371 billion on these operations through 2016.
That's over $1,000 more for each man woman and child.
But the numbers are the least of the problem. The real issue here is the appalling lack of oversight into how this money is spent.
Rather than going through the normal budget process, spending on the Iraq war is done entirely through "emergency supplementals," which bypass all the ordinary controls that eliminate waste, fraud and abuse:
Virtually all of this money has been authorized by Congress as "emergency supplemental" funding. That is supposed to mean "we didn't expect it and we need it right away, so don't waste time with the normal budget process." And that is how it has been done. The funding request is prepared at the top of the Defense Department, but does not go through the regular internal budget planning process; it is waved through the White House, and lands--with minimal justification--on congressional desks. Normally, the defense budget is reviewed three times--by the Budget Committee, the Armed Services Committee, and the Appropriations Committee. Emergency supplementals skip the first two committees and go straight to the money guys--the appropriators. Over the past five years, the appropriators have held virtually no public hearings on the Iraq money; they just mark it up and push it through for a vote. So nobody is minding the store the way they should.
Even worse, despite Congressional requests, the Bush administration has refused to offer any after-the-fact accounting for what happened with this money:
The Defense Department, which has received over 90 percent of the $437 billion, has stiffed Congress for two years on a requirement that Congress voted into law to demand regular reporting on how they are spending the money. So, aside from anecdotal evidence, we don't really know what happened with the money.
Well, you might say, this lack of oversight certainly is troubling. But isn't this what always happens with war? Aren't wars always financed through this emergency supplemental procedure?
Absolutely not. The Bush administration's lack of financial accountability in financing the Iraq war is historically unprecedented:
The Congressional Research Service looked at that question and found that in every previous war, since World War II, after one or at the most two years, the [President] planned and requested war funding from the Congress through the regular budget process. This time we are doing something new and dangerous.
Read the whole thing. I was so upset after finishing the piece, I was literally shaking. The Cheney Administration is steamrolling Congress and the American people to rob them of their hard earned dollars in order to fund their destructive pet projects, and they have smashed through all systems of oversight and accountability to do so.
This needs to stop now. November 2006 will be just the first step in stopping this trainwreck (Although it will be a singularly important step). We will still have much much more work to do thereafter.