Blog For Arizona

Senatorial Cowardice

The $87 billion emergency-spending bill passed by Congress on Monday may be the largest bill of its kind in history, bigger than the budgets of Departments of Homeland Security and Education combined.  Yet, Congress has left itself only a modest role to play in the oversight of how the money is actually spent.

Originally both the House and Senate agreed that more transparency and accountability were necessary in the reconstruction process.  But many of the provisions that members voted for were later removed when House and Senate negotiators agreed on a single bill.   For example:
 
=> The Senate originally voted 97 to 0 to have the General Accounting Office conduct audits of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq.  That provision was stripped in the conference committee on a party line vote.

=> Responding to the uproar about non-competitive bidding in Iraq, the House passed an amendment requiring competitive bidding on oil contracts. But that was also removed during a conference committee vote.

=> Perhaps most astounding, Congress in its final Iraq spending bill did not even include language offered by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) to penalize war profiteers for defrauding American taxpayers.  The Senate Appropriations Committee unanimously approved a provision to ensure that contractors who cheated the American taxpayer would face fines of up to $1 million and jail time of up to 20 years.   Senators of both parties supported the provision, but Republican House negotiators refused to include the language in the final bill.  

In the end, for all the grandstanding about transparency and accountability in Iraq, Congress has made only a modest attempt to oversee how the reconstruction money will be spent.  And Congress doesn’t seem interested in punishing people who are convicted of defrauding the government.

BUT IT’S NOT TOO LATE.  Congress can still do something.  Senator Leahy is offering his anti-profiteering provision as a freestanding bill, the War Profiteering Prevention Act of 2003.  

Call your Senators and ask them to prove they are interested in protecting the American taxpayer by cosponsoring S. 1813, the War Profiteering Prevention Act of 2003.

posted by Michael Bryan @ 11/06/2003 10:07:00 PM