National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008
Floor Speech
NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2008
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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I am here to speak in support of amendment No. 2999, as amended. This is an amendment that is very important to me, and I appreciate the leadership of my colleagues Senator McCaskill and Senator Webb, and in fact all of the freshmen Democrats who are supporting this legislation, the goal of which is to bring more public accountability to the way our Government does business.
I think you and I both know, having spent the last 2 years going around our State, that people are yearning for more public accountability from our Government. They are yearning for more transparency. We heard calls for that--increased transparency. And here we have, in the area of Armed Services and the area of Government contracting, a chance to act on it.
This amendment establishes an independent, bipartisan commission to strengthen Government oversight and examine the true costs of a contracting culture that the Federal Government relies upon in Iraq. This idea is not unprecedented.
The legislation is inspired by the work of the Truman Commission and it is fitting Senator McCaskill is from Missouri, as was Truman. The Truman Commission, as you know, conducted hundreds of hearings and investigations into Government waste during World War II, at an estimated savings of more than $178 billion in today's dollars; $178 billion. Think of what that would mean to the American taxpayer today at a time when we are spending somewhere between $10 to $12 billion a month in Iraq.
There is, unfortunately, a natural tendency in this country toward excess and corporate excess. So when people are given sort of unlimited contracts, no-bid contracts, I think you can expect excess.
I come from a prosecutor background. We know that when people are given leeway, and maybe even when they have the best intentions, the people in charge, the people on the ground, it leads to fraud and the Government is the one that is on the short end of the stick.
I think it is more than just a cost of doing business when we are looking at what we have been seeing in Iraq with private contractors over the last 5 years. The number of contractors in Iraq, the last estimate I had, was 180,000. It now exceeds the number of American combat troops in Iraq. We need to look at the effects these logistical and security contractors have on our military.
Now, I would say this: We are not talking about creating an additional bureaucracy. We are talking about expanding an infrastructure that already exists. The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, with the excellent performance that we have seen in uncovering waste, fraud, and abuse in Iraq reconstruction projects, is proof of its ability to conduct more interagency examination of wartime contracts.
The special inspector general has proven to be a powerful tool in investigating reconstruction contracts. In 2005 alone, he reported a loss of $9 billion tax due to a contractor's inefficiency and bad management.
I can tell you this, in my job as county attorney, when we had a case in front of us, we would always say: Follow the money and you would find the bad guy.
Well, we need to do more of that with Iraqi contractors. This motto could not be more true than it is today as the GAO, the Defense Contract Audit Agency, and news reports continue to expose gross mismanagement in defense contracting.
That is why I am so proud to support this amendment. We have heard that of the $57 billion awarded in contracts for reconstruction in Iraq that was investigated, approximately $10 billion has been wasted; $4.9 billion was lost through contractor overpricing and waste; $5.1 billion was lost through unsupported contract charges. Of this $10 billion, more than $2.7 billion was charged by Halliburton. This means almost 1 in 6 Federal tax dollars sent to rebuild Iraq has been wasted. And while we have heard in dollars the staggering amount, this waste amount, $10 billion, the costs of mismanaged contracts extends beyond that.
For instance, if you look at the electricity in Baghdad, you have seen the city only enjoying an average of 6.5 hours of electricity a day. It has actually gone down from where it was a year ago.
Water. Congress has provided nearly $2 billion to provide clean drinking water and repair sewer systems. But according to the World Health Organization, 70 percent of Iraqis lack access to clean drinking water.
With jobs, the Defense Department has estimated that the unemployment rate is anywhere from 13.6 percent to 60 percent. In a recent survey, only 16 percent of Iraqis said their current incomes met their basic needs. These costs in every way are unacceptable. They are unacceptable to the people of Iraq, and they are unacceptable to the taxpayers of this country.
My colleagues and I--and you are one of them, Mr. President--came to Washington demanding accountability. Today I am proud to be part of a group that supports an important amendment to bring more transparency, to bring accountability to contracting in Iraq.
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