Lowey on mismanagement of Iraq spending
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- October
- 30
Rep. Nita Lowey, D-Harrison, said this afternoon that the Bush administration should not expect Congress to provide additional money for Iraq “until we can be assured that taxpayer funds will change the course in Iraq, advance American interests and be accounted for fully and accurately.’’
Lowey’s comment came at a House subcommittee hearing she chaired on the latest oversight findings by the Government Accountability Office and the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction that in many cases U.S. money is being funneled to contractors who don’t perform the work they are hired to do or there is no paper trail on how the money is being spent.
In one instance, $36.4 million was spent for body armor and weapons but the that equipment cannot be located.
Lowey wondered why “taxpayer money is being wasted in this way.’’
Stuart Bowen, Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, said there’s no evidence that missing equipment ended up in the hands of insurgents but its whereabout can’t be documented.
Since 2003 the United States has dedicated $45 billion for relief and reconstruction in Iraq. Lowey noted that President Bush requested another $3.4 billion last week as part of his latest request for emergency spending on the Iraq war.
Rep. Frank Wolf of Virginia, the ranking Republican on Lowey’s subcommittee, noted that the House passed legislation that would make one U.S. official accountable to how reconstrcution money is spent in Iraq. But that language—which was one of the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group—was dropped in negotiations with the Senate, according to Wolf.
Lowey said the reason that the language was dropped was because of the White House.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 at 5:08 pm by Brian Tumulty.
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Taxpayer money being wasted? Good, I’m all for serious oversight of all and any of this type of rip- off. But what about Lowey’s 2 million dollar taxpayer boondoggle gift under the Homeland Security URBAN HIGH RISK FOR TERRORISM ACTS to suburban synagogues? Some might say, well, it’s ONLY 2 million, but multiply this kind of thing by 50 states. Everybody’s in on the act! Hypocrisy reigns.