Katrina Style Government: Our Gift to Iraq

May 11, 2006

Katrina Style Government: Our Gift to Iraq
Posted by Lorelei Kelly

From the outside, today's Congress looks like a dank Gollum's den of tricksy, swilling, one-armed-bandits wearing golf pants and traipsing to the Lear jet courtesy of taxpayer subsidized corporations. But we do still have elected leaders who valiantly insist that our legislature perform its oversight duties. This week, Rep. Henry Waxman (CA) released a memo about corruption run rampant in the post-hurricane Gulf Coast. Like Iraq deja vu, private contractors exploited the system to make millions and ripped off the taxpayers while the folks who needed the help were left wanting.

Here's a fun irony: Conservatives who ignore all free-market principles when it comes to product delivery. Its called a "cost plus" contracting system and it works exactly like it sounds. Be ready to go when crisis erupts then charge for the cost and add a profit that is a percentage of the cost... Wheeeee! a recipe for unending, no-questions- asked profit! In Iraq, because monopoly contracts were awarded before specific projects were identified, there was no actual price competition for more than 2,000 projects. That must be how Halliburton, despite $263 million in unaccounted for reconstruction funds for the project "Restore Iraqi Oil" -- still managed to pay out $100 million in profits and bonuses or that it racked up $1.2 billion in unaccounted costs for the logistics support to the war and still served up contaminated water to our troops! Back in 03, we did hear a few yelps about no bid contracting for Halliburton and the fact that VP Cheney was prior CEO of that very same company. We were told that Cheney was not involved in the decision. Yet the DoD political appointee who secured the billions for Halliburton did so after consulting with a "principles committee" that included the now indicted Cheney Chief of Staff Scooter Libby. The wikipedia description of "cost-plus" sounds like today's conservative leadership philosophy in a nutshell:

easy to calculate
minimal information requirements
easy to administer
tends to ignore the role of consumers
tends to ignore the role of competitors

Being in the minority, Waxman and his Democratic colleagues on the Government Reform committee have some success in convening oversight hearings on these issues (much thanks to Christopher Shays, Republican maverick from Connecticut).

The larger theme here, however, is a battle of ideologies about what government is for. 30 years of conservative contempt has gutted our public services across the board (except for the military, which has been forced to take up much of the slack). You don't have to be a government-weenie to appreciate the need for smart, trained and permanent staff to be on hand to serve the public both overseas and in New Orleans--and to ask hard questions. One of the most shocking parts of the Iraq financing fiasco is that the role of accountability itself was outsourced. Congressional appropriators (the people who control the money) shifted funds from the US Government to hire yet more contractors to do the Iraq reconstruction oversight--the very companies who were partners on millions of dollars worth of deals with Halliburton. Yeah, right.

And we're supposed to be excited about $100 gasoline rebate?

May 11, 2006 at 01:46 AM in Iraq | Permalink

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May 11, 2006