I have a friend that just finished a tour in Iraq. He was in charge of a lot of people and it was hard to get him home. That story is for another time. He told me of the problems they are having with contractors in Iraq. For example: contractors are paid $100,000 to $250,000 per year, for a job that the military gets done for $30,000 per year.
A couple of months ago the Republicans passed a bill, in the middle of the night, that no one had a chance to read. Literally! It was passed out of Conference Committee and the members of the House and Senate passed it without seeing what the Conference Committee had done to the bills that each body had submitted.
It turns out that committee did away with the Iraq Inspector General. Who, you say? The position of Iraq Inspector General was created to make sure that our tax dollars were not being squandered on dubious activity in Iraq. They have saved us millions, if not billions of dollars. Thanks to the fine Senator from Wisconsin, Russ Finegold, the position has now been extended. You can read more about it here: http://www.firedoglake.com/
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Interesting, first that I have read of this issue (Four small kids, do limit my reading) I'm glad that Senator Finegold was alert. I'll have to dig into this and see if my conservative friends were concerned about this issue.
My recollection is that the Chair or the Senate committee that sent this to the Conference Committee was very surprised. She was not aware that the provision had been inserted until after everyone had voted to pass the bill. I feel this is one of the problems faced by good lawmakers under the system created by Tom Delay. The conference committee had all the power and everyone had to fall in line. Many bills were passed unread.
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