Press Releases
September 26, 2007
Floor Statement of Senator Jim Webb on the Webb-McCaskill Amendment to Establish a Commission on Wartime Contracting
Washington, DC—Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) delivered the following floor remarks, urging support for the Webb-McCaskill amendment that would establish a independent, bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting to seek out waste, fraud, and abuse and address systemic problems in contracting procedures.
Mr. President, I would like to add to the comments that were made by my colleague from Missouri about the Truman Commission amendment that we have jointly introduced along with the other freshman members on the Democratic side, the Independent side and with a total of 27 cosponsors as of this morning. I don’t think that there is a more important or more volatile issue right now in terms of government accountability than the issue of the expenditures that have gone into Iraq and Afghanistan and the accountability of not only the contractors but of the quasi-military forces that have been operating there.
We’ve put a great deal of effort into designing a Wartime Commission that was inspired by the Truman Commission in World War II but has its own uniqueness given the issues of today. I’m very proud to be one of the original sponsors on this legislation. I would hope that members on both sides of the aisle can support it. We are attempting in a fair way, with experts in the field not simply a group of Senators forming a panel but with bringing in experts in competence from the areas that they would be looking at in a short period of time, two years, to examine the amounts of money that have been spent, where this money has gone, to try to bring some accountability into the system and to make their reports in some cases with legal accountability and then to wrap it up and go home.
This is not one of these attempts to create a permanent standing organization but, rather, one that can come in with the right people, take a look at what went wrong, make a report to the American people and in some cases give them their money back, since all of these now nearly $1 trillion have been spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, without a lot of accountability - that’s taxpayer money. To try and find out how it was spent, in most cases, it’s been spent properly but in those cases where it hasn’t been spent properly to get people their money back and get accountability to the people who did not spend it right.
This is about improved transparency. It would be forward-looking in terms of looking at these systemic problems and attempting to address them. But it’s more than that. This amendment is supported, as Senator McCaskill indicated, by nearly every major taxpayer watchdog group.
We are now with the present state of the Department of Defense and of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, outsourcing war in ways that we have never seen in our history. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been allocated for reconstruction and for wartime support, creating a strong potential for fraud, waste, and abuse. This commission will ensure financial accountability in those areas where there has been fraud, waste, and abuse with provisions that allow for legal accountability, in cases of wrongdoing. It also will look at such organizations as Blackwater, which has recently been in the news for the alleged series of wrongful killings of Iraqis and excessive force.
This is an area that has slid past us as a representative government, which is a cause for great concern for anyone who has been involved in national security affairs over the years. We now have in Iraq, 180,000 contractors working in a war where there are 160,000 troops. They are doing a whole panorama of chores that traditionally have been done by military people, all the way from operating the mess halls to providing security for even on some occasions General Petraeus himself. There’s no accountability, none, in terms of legal accountability for actions that have been take that result in inappropriate use of force and in some cases wrongful deaths of people in that area. This Commission would help address that.
We’re also looking at basic contractor accountability. As one example, not long ago the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction reported that of the $32 billion at that time that had been spent on reconstruction and relief funds – this is State Department programs - $9 billion was unaccounted for. $9 billion out of $32 billion was unaccounted for. We need desperately to have an independent, fair, objective analysis of what has happened, what is happening, not only for accountability but also to help us design a structure for the future.
Again, we’re not trying to create a new bureaucracy. The Commission would rely on the Inspectors General in agencies that already exist for most of the analysis and we are sunsetting this provision at two years. We are very comfortable with SIGIR’s excellent performance in uncovering waste, fraud, and abuse in Iraq reconstruction projects. We think that is proof of the ability to do this on a more comprehensive and thorough level and that’s what we need.
Mr. President, I am strongly urging our colleagues on both sides of the aisle to lay aside political differences and come together with the reality that all of us have an obligation to put accountability into this system to the American people and in some cases to give people back the money that they spend in tax dollars for programs that were wrongfully carried out or in some cases not carried out at all.
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