Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Hurricane Recovery, 2006
EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS ACT FOR DEFENSE, THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR, AND HURRICANE RECOVERY, 2006 -- (House of Representatives - March 16, 2006)
Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Chairman I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. I rise in support of the Waxman-Dingell amendment which is about waste, fraud and abuse. That is it. And this is the full extent of the amendment, eight lines, very simple.
All it says is that none of the funds appropriated or made available by this Act shall be obligated or expended by the Secretary of the Army to any contractor if the Defense Contract Audit Agency has determined that more than $100 million of the contractor's costs for contracts involving work in Iraq under one or more Army contracts were unreasonable.
So we have set up a process to get rid of waste, fraud and abuse. How long does it take to figure that out?
I cannot imagine that anybody in this body wants to fund waste, fraud and abuse, particularly in excess of $100 million. That is what this is about.
Last June, Congressman Waxman released a report documenting a stunning $1.4 billion in questioned and unsupported charges by Halliburton in Iraq. Don't we want to know about that?
Last month, The New York Times reported that the Bush administration ignored 97 percent of the recommendations made by Pentagon auditors and awarded Halliburton over $250 million under its Iraq oil contract. And just last week, a Federal jury found that another firm, Custer Battles, defrauded the government by millions of dollars under just one of its Iraq contracts.
So how does this Congress justify ignoring blatant stealing? Do we not all want to get at that? I mean, too many of our soldiers have been asked to do without proper body armor and equipment, and they come home to reduced benefits, and this Congress has found it easy enough to say no to our soldiers; and yet every single time we have been able to say yes to Halliburton.
Is it not time that all of us agree that it is wrong to have this kind of waste, fraud and abuse and to pass this simple amendment?
I urge a "yes" vote.
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Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Chairman, I am proud to cosponsor the Lee amendment to prohibit any funds from the supplemental from being used to enter into a basing rights agreement between the United States and Iraq. It is clear that the Iraqis, Shiites and Sunnis alike, in overwhelming numbers, do not want us to stay there. And the Secretary of Defense has said that there are no plans or discussions under way to have permanent bases in that country. So this would codify that. This would make sure that that is true.
And yet it has been suggested by top military leaders, including General John Abizaid, as recently as this week, that the United States may want to keep a long-term military presence in Iraq. If true, this is a scheme fraught with danger. As anyone knows that watches television or reads the paper, the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq has been a powerful recruiting tool for the Iraqi insurgency. And General George Casey has agreed with that, saying that by getting our troops out of there that we would take away one of the elements that fuels the insurgency. Please support this amendment. It is good for our troops and good for our country and theirs.
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