ME-Sen: Tom Allen on waste in Iraq
Fri Apr 18, 2008 at 10:53:57 AM PDT
Tom Allen represents the 1st District of Maine, and is running to unseat Maine's junior senator, Susan Collins. The 1st District compromises the southern 1/3 of the Pine Tree state, which is much less rural in nature than the norther tier. Bangor, Maine's second largest city, is the business and economic hub of the 2nd District, and the Bangor Daily News is the de-facto newspaper for much of the area.
In this morning's BDN, Rep. Allen has this opinion piece, which begins:
People in Maine work hard for the money they pay in federal taxes, and they have a right to expect Congress to make sure that greedy, inept and sometimes corrupt contractors do not waste or pilfer the taxpayers’ money.
In March, the Government Accountability Office, Congress’ nonpartisan watchdog agency, reported that 95 Defense Department procurement programs were over budget by a total of $295 billion. This is one of the failures Thomas E. Mann of the Brookings Institution and Norman J. Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute cited in their 2006 book, "The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track."
Make the jump:
As you may know, Susan Collins was the first chair of the Senate's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (now chaired by her BFF Joe Lieberman). The committee is charged with, amongst other things, examining ALL contracts into which the Federal government enters with some exceptions. During the four plus years she chaired the committee, she held just one hearing regarding the waste, fraud and theft that has come to define the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq. (I have written about this at Turn Maine Blue here, here and here.)
Allen continues:
Reports of waste, fraud and abuse by independent contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan are even more shocking. The Bush administration, abetted by its allies in Congress, has blocked congressional oversight for billions awarded to contractors such as Halliburton. Here are some examples:
Marie DeYoung is a former Army chaplain who worked for Halliburton, auditing its subsidiary KBR’s operations in Iraq. In 2004, she told NBC News about some of the abuses she uncovered during just five months on the job. She provided documents detailing outrageous prices KBR charged for services to our troops ranging from $45 per case of sodas to $1 million a month to clean clothes at a cost of $100 for each 15-pound bag of laundry.
"It’s just a gravy train," DeYoung said. "That money could have been used to take care of soldiers."
In 2004, the Pentagon’s own auditors found that KBR overcharged the government by $186 million for food alone. A 2004 report by the House Committee on Government Reform Minority Office found that Halliburton charged more than three times more than a federal agency, the Defense Energy Support Center, to transport gasoline into Iraq from Kuwait. The report revealed that paying Halliburton rather than the military to truck fuel into Iraq increased the cost by $167 million, or 90 percent.
In light of this, a provision to the Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 would have created a commission to look into wartime contracts, which had the distinction of being set aside via a signing statement. Allen had this to say:
Washington, D.C. (Tuesday, January 29, 2007)---U. S. Representative Tom Allen today condemned a "signing statement" issued yesterday by President Bush as he signed the Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008. In the statement, the President asserts that he is not bound to comply with two provisions which Representative Allen sponsored in the House. Section 841 of the bill would establish an independent Commission on Wartime Contracting to investigate Iraq and Afghanistan wartime contracts and the contracting processes. This Commission is based on then-Senator Harry Truman’s special Committee during World War II. Representative Allen and Representative John F. Tierney (D-MA) sponsored this provision in the House and Senators Jim Webb (D-VA) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) sponsored the companion legislation in the Senate. Section 1222 of the bill bans spending of any appropriated or authorized funds to establish permanent military bases in Iraq. Representative Allen first introduced legislation to prohibit funding for permanent bases in Iraq in 2005.
We are currently dumping more than $330 million dollars into Iraq every day. Collins knows that she is in a tight race, tighter than polls indicate, and so she is trying to burnish the myth of she as a moderate. You can help Mainers learn about the differences by learning more about Tom Allen, and talking up this race. Please visit TOM ALLEN FOR SENATE to find out more.
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