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Saturday, May 24, 2008

Guess Who’s Wasting Taxpayer Money Again-the GOP

For all the boastful proclamations about watching over government spending, and need to stop wasting taxpayer money, we now know it’s nothing but meaningless tough talk and framing. Is there any other explanation for our sending our taxes to unaccountable private schools in the form of vouchers?

We’re hearing again that they just don’t give a damn about wasting taxpayer dollars as long as it’s on their own “bridge to nowhere” boondoggles.

The NY Times reported that:

“A Pentagon audit of $8.2 billion in American taxpayer money spent by the United
States Army on contractors in Iraq has found that almost none of the payments followed federal rules and that in some cases, contracts worth millions of dollars were paid for despite little or no record of what, if anything, was received.”

While Republicans might pare $400,000 or $100 million dollars from the tight educational funding in states across the country, it appears to be too much trouble to get a receipt for $8.2 billion dollars from army contractors.

"The audit also found a sometimes stunning lack of accountability in the way the
United States military spent some $1.8 billion in seized or frozen Iraqi assets,
which in the early phases of the conflict were often doled out in stacks or
pallets of cash."

"$11.1 million of taxpayer money was paid to IAP, an American contractor, on the
basis of a voucher with no indication of what was delivered."

"But perhaps the masterpiece of elliptic paperwork is the document identified at
the top as a “Public Voucher for Purchases and Services Other Than Personal.” It
indicates that $320.8 million went for “Iraqi Salary Payment,” with no explanation of what the Iraqis were paid to do. The Pentagon’s deputy inspector general for auditing (said) that the absence of anything beyond a voucher meant that ‘we were giving or providing a payment without any basis for the payment. We don’t know what we got.’ Expenditures lacked other information required by federal regulations governing the use of taxpayer money — things like payment terms, proper identification numbers and contact information for the agents involved in the transaction."


i.e. school vouchers, faith based initiatives and outsourced federal and local government contracting.

“The Pentagon report, titled ‘Internal Controls Over Payments Made in Iraq,
Kuwait and Egypt,’ also notes that auditors were unable to find a comprehensible
set of records to explain $134.8 million in payments by the American military to its allies in the Iraq war. 'It sounds like the coalition of the willing is the coalition of the paid — they’re willing to be paid,' said Mr. Waxman, who later in the day introduced what he called a “clean contracting” amendment to a
defense authorization bill."

As insane as the conservative agenda has been since the mid 1990’s, like borrowing money to support two wars while depleting the governments general fund with tax cuts, they are pleading with voters to give them another chance to get it right.

That could happen if the Democrats don’t mention, every time they open their mouth, that we got to where we are right now in this country because of Republican economic bungling. But since they haven’t made that point, the public in a recent poll didn’t know who to blame for the countries disastrous direction.

For any political party, missing a chance to pass along that one simple message is first; irresponsible, and second; pathetic. And it appears the Democratic numbskulls qualify in both categories.

Good day sir.

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