[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 60 (Tuesday, April 19, 2016)]
[House]
[Pages H1807-H1809]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 WASTING TAXPAYER MONEY IN AFGHANISTAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
North Carolina (Mr. Jones) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. JONES. Madam Speaker, I have brought to the floor today a 
prophetic political cartoon. Let me describe it very quickly.
  There is Uncle Sam sitting in a wheelchair, and he shouts out with 
great excitement: I can see Greece from here. Behind the wheelchair 
pushing is President Obama. Behind President Obama is a donkey 
representing the Democratic Party, and behind the donkey is an elephant 
representing the Republican Party, the point being that all of us are 
guilty of heading this country towards Greece, and that means an 
economic collapse is forthcoming.
  Madam Speaker, we are $19 trillion in debt.
  Another reason I am on the floor today is that the continued waste of 
the taxpayer money in Afghanistan is becoming astounding.
  Madam Speaker, I include in the Record an article titled, ``Report 
cites wasted Pentagon money in Afghanistan.''

                   [From USATODAY.com, Jan. 20, 2016]

           Report Cites Wasted Pentagon Money in Afghanistan

                         (By Tom Vanden Brook)

       Washington.--The embattled Pentagon agency blamed for 
     building a budget-busting gas station in Afghanistan and 
     renting luxury housing for its employees also imported 
     Italian goats to boost the cashmere industry in the 
     impoverished, war-wracked country, according to a government 
     investigator.
       Meanwhile, the former head of the Task Force for Business 
     Stability Operations, Paul Brinkley, blasted back Wednesday 
     at the government inspector general, accusing him of 
     inaccuracy and hype.
       At a Senate hearing, John Sopko, the Special Inspector 
     General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR), said in prepared 
     testimony that the task force lacked ``strategic direction'' 
     and suffered from a ``scattershot approach to economic 
     development.''
       Among the more egregious examples of boondoggles he cited: 
     ``importing rare blond Italian goats to boost the cashmere 
     industry.'' The $6 million program included shipping nine 
     male goats to western Afghanistan from Italy, setting up a 
     farm, lab and staff to certify their wool.
       A chart summarizing task force initiatives shows the 
     inspector general did not conduct an audit of the program. 
     The program, according to a contractor's analysis, may have 
     created as many as 350 jobs. Sopko ripped the Pentagon and 
     the task force for failing to track its spending. It's not 
     unclear, for instance, if the goats were eaten.
       ``We don't know,'' Sopko said. ``This was so poorly 
     managed.''
       Sopko testified Wednesday on his report, ``Preliminary 
     Results Show Serious Management and Oversight Problems.'' The 
     task force was charged with jump starting the economy of 
     Afghanistan with nearly $800 million in U.S. taxpayer funds.
       Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., who chaired the hearing, called 
     the allegations about the filling station troubling and 
     called for a full accounting of task force spending.
       ``What happened to the money?'' Ayotte asked. ``All of 
     it?''
       Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., was livid about task force 
     spending and called the natural gas-station program ``dumb on 
     its face,'' given the cost of converting cars to natural gas 
     exceeds the average income of Afghans.
       ``This is a terrible waste of taxpayer money when we have 
     so many other uses for it,'' McCaskill said.
       In a letter and other documents, Brinkley, who led the task 
     force in Iraq and later Afghanistan from 2006 to 2011, 
     defended his oversight of the agency and lashed out at the 
     government's watchdog.
       ``A meaningful and balanced review cannot be accomplished 
     through a sustained media campaign or a practice of repeating 
     uncorroborated allegations,'' Brinkley wrote to the Senate 
     Armed Services Committee.
       Sopko has released several provocative reports charging the 
     task force with waste and shoddy accounting practices. Among 
     the most eye-catching: a $43 million natural-gas filling 
     station that should have cost $500,000 and proved of no use 
     to average Afghans; and $150 million spent on renting luxury 
     villas for task force staff and visitors. Those alleged 
     boondoggles have drawn ire from Capitol Hill and cast 
     Brinkley as a profligate spender.
       Brinkley, through his lawyer, bristled at the charge from 
     the inspector general that he had approved of programs 
     without knowing their cost. Brinkley told investigators on 
     Dec. 17 that his task force had no contracting authority, 
     relying instead on career military officials to make deals 
     within government regulations, according to his lawyer.
       ``This was done, in fact, in fact to ensure proper 
     oversight--not to avoid it,'' Brinkley's lawyer, Charles 
     Duross, wrote Wednesday to the inspector general's office.
       The Pentagon on Wednesday also took issue with Sopko's 
     price tag for the gas station, saying it was closer to $5 
     million, not $43 million. Brian McKeon, a top Pentagon policy 
     official, said in a statement to USA TODAY that the methods 
     used Sopko were ``flawed, and the costs of the station are 
     far lower.''
       The refueling station itself cost $2.9 million, and the 
     balance of the $5 million paid for associated buildings and 
     equipment, McKeon said.
       Brinkley, in his letter, challenged the assertion that he 
     and his staff lived in luxury, eschewing the basic, free 
     accommodations offered by the military in Afghanistan.
       In a previous report, Sopko criticized the task force for 
     spending $150 million on ``western-style hotel 
     accommodations'' that included flat-screen TVs, private 
     bodyguards and ``three-star'' menus for staff and guests. 
     Bunking with the Army, Sopko suggested, could have saved 
     taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.
       Living conditions during his tenure, Brinkley wrote, were 
     far from luxurious--``basic and minimal, with multiple bunks 
     in shared living quarters'' or on military bases.
       ``When this was not possible or practical, the challenge 
     was to find facilities that did not continually smell of raw 
     sewage, and food that did not frequently sicken our personnel 
     or visiting government and business leaders--a challenge we 
     never fully overcame,'' Brinkley wrote.
       The task force's final grade is not yet in, McKeon said.
       ``Ultimately, time will tell whether the task force 
     succeeded in its overall objectives,'' McKeon said. ``Reports 
     that the (Pentagon) commissioned to assess the Task Force's 
     work--as well as SIGAR's work--tell us that the Task Force 
     had a mixed record of success, with some successes and some 
     failures.''

  Mr. JONES. In this story, John Sopko, the Inspector General for 
Afghanistan Reconstruction, tells that the worst boondoggle he has ever 
seen is the fact that the Department of Defense spent $6 million to buy 
nine goats--nine goats--for $6 million.
  The sad thing about that is he testified before the Senate: We can't 
find the goats. What does that mean to the taxpayers? I don't know 
anymore. That is why they are so outraged, quite frankly,
  Madam Speaker, I include in the Record a second article titled, ``12 
Ways Your Tax Dollars Were Squandered in Afghanistan.''

                   [From NBC NEWS.com, March 5, 2016]

        12 Ways Your Tax Dollars Were Squandered in Afghanistan

                          (By Alexander Smith)

       The United States has now spent more money reconstructing 
     Afghanistan than it did rebuilding Europe at the end of World 
     War II, according to a government watchdog.
       The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan 
     Reconstruction (SIGAR) said in a statement to Congress last 
     week that when adjusted for inflation the $113.1 billion 
     plowed

[[Page H1808]]

     into the chaos-riven country outstripped the post-WWII spend 
     by at least $10 billion.
       Billions have been squandered on projects that were either 
     useless or sub-standard, or lost to waste, corruption, and 
     systemic abuse, according to SIGAR's reports.
       NBC News spoke to SIGAR's Special Inspector General John F. 
     Sopko about 12 of the most bizarre and baffling cases 
     highlighted by his team's investigations.
       Paraphrasing Albert Einstein, Sopko said the U.S.'s 
     profligate spending in Afghanistan is ``the definition of 
     insanity--doing the same things over and over vain, expecting 
     a different result.''
       The Pentagon spent close to half a billion dollars on 20 
     Italian-made cargo planes that it eventually scrapped and 
     sold for just $32,000, according to SIGAR.
       ``These planes were the wrong planes for Afghanistan,'' 
     Sopko told NBC News. ``The U.S. had difficulty getting the 
     Afghans to fly them, and our pilots called them deathtraps. 
     One pilot said parts started falling off while he was coming 
     into land.''
       After being taken out of use in March 2013, the G222 
     aircraft, which are also referred to as the C-27A Spartan, 
     were towed to a corner of Kabul International Airport where 
     they were visible from the civilian terminal. They had 
     ``trees and bushes growing around them,'' the inspector 
     general said.
       Sixteen of the planes were scrapped and sold to a local 
     construction company for 6 cents a pound, SIGAR said. The 
     other four remained unused at a U.S. base in Germany.
       Sopko called the planes ``one of the biggest single 
     programs in Afghanistan that was a total failure.''
       The Tarakhil Power Plant was fired up in 2009 to ``provide 
     more reliable power'' to blackout-plagued Kabul, according to 
     the United States Agency for International Development, which 
     built the facility.
       However, the ``modern'' diesel plant exported just 8,846 
     megawatt hours of power between February 2014 and April 2015, 
     SIGAR said in a letter to USAID last August. This output was 
     less than 1 percent of the plant's capacity and provided just 
     0.35 percent of power to Kabul, a city of 4.6 million people.
       Related: U.S. Spent $43M on Gas Station But Can't Explain 
     Why
       Furthermore, the plant's ``frequent starts and stops . . . 
     place greater wear and tear on the engines and electrical 
     components,'' which could result in its ``catastrophic 
     failure,'' the watchdog said.
       USAID responded to SIGAR's report in June 2015, saying: 
     ``We have no indication that [Afghan state-run utility 
     company] Da Afghanistan Breshna Sherkat (DABS), failed to 
     operate Tarakhil as was alleged in your letter.''
       U.S. officials directed and oversaw the construction of an 
     Afghan police training facility in 2012 that was so poorly 
     built that its walls actually fell apart in the rain. The 
     $456,669 dry-fire range in Wardak province was ``not only an 
     embarrassment, but, more significantly, a waste of U.S. 
     taxpayers' money,'' SIGAR's report said in January 2015.
       It was overseen by the U.S. Central Command's Joint Theater 
     Support Contracting Command and contracted out to an Afghan 
     firm, the Qesmatullah Nasrat Construction Company.
       SIGAR said this ``melting'' started just four months after 
     the building was finished in October 2012. It blamed U.S. 
     officials' bad planning and failure to hold to account the 
     Afghan construction firm, which used poor-quality materials. 
     The U.S. subsequently contracted another firm to rebuild the 
     facility.
       Sopko called the incident ``baffling.'' ``Afghans 
     apparently have never grown or eaten soybeans before,'' SIGAR 
     said in its June 2014 report. This did not stop the U.S. 
     Department of Agriculture funding a $34.4 million program by 
     the American Soybean Association to try to introduce the 
     foodstuff into the country in 2010.
       The project ``did not meet expectations,'' the USDA 
     confirmed to SIGAR, largely owing to inappropriate farming 
     conditions in Afghanistan and the fact no one wanted to buy a 
     product they had never eaten.
       ``They didn't grow them, they didn't eat them, there was no 
     market for them, and yet we thought it was a good idea,'' 
     Sopko told NBC News.
       ``What is troubling about this particular project is that 
     it appears that many of these problems could reasonably have 
     been foreseen and, therefore, possibly avoided,'' the 
     inspector general wrote in a letter to Agriculture Secretary 
     Tom Vilsack in June 2014.
       The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built some 2,000 buildings 
     to be used as barracks, medical clinics and fire stations by 
     the Afghan National Army as part of a $1.57-billion program. 
     When two fires in October and December 2012 revealed that 
     around 80 percent of these structures did not meet 
     international building regulations for fire safety, Sopko 
     said he was ``troubled'' by the ``arrogant'' response from a 
     senior USACE chief.
       Major General Michael R. Eyre, commanding general of 
     USACE's Transatlantic Division, said the risk of fire was 
     acceptable because ``the typical occupant populations for 
     these facilities are young, fit Afghan soldiers.'' Writing in 
     a January 2014 memo published by SIGAR, Eyre said these 
     recruits ``have the physical ability to make a hasty retreat 
     during a developing situation.''
       Sopko told NBC News that Eyre's comments ``showed a really 
     poor attitude toward our allies.'' He added: ``It was an 
     unbelievable arrogance, and I'm sorry to say that about a 
     senior officer.''
       Despite the Department of Defense spending $597,929 on 
     Salang Hospital in Afghanistan's Parwan province, the 20-bed 
     facility has been forced to resort to startling medical 
     practices.
       ``Because there was no clean water, staff at the hospital 
     were washing newborns with untreated river water,'' SIGAR's 
     report said in January 2014. It added that the ``poorly 
     constructed'' building was also at increased ``risk of 
     structural collapse during an earthquake.''
       NBC News visited the hospital in January 2014 and witnessed 
     some disturbing practices: a doctor poking around a dental 
     patient's mouth with a pair of unsterilized scissors before 
     yanking out another's tooth with a pair of pliers.
       Related: $600K in U.S. Taxpayer Cash Buys Medieval Hospital 
     in Afghanistan
       The United States Forces-Afghanistan responded to SIGAR's 
     report in January 2014 saying it would investigate why the 
     building was not constructed to standard.
       In a separate report, SIGAR said that USAID reimbursed the 
     International Organization for Migration for spiraling costs 
     while building Gardez Hospital, in Paktia province.
       The IOM's ``weak internal controls'' meant it paid $300,000 
     for just 600 gallons of diesel fuel--a price of $500 per 
     gallon when market prices should not have exceeded $5, SIGAR 
     said.
       The so-called ``64K'' command-and-control facility at 
     Afghanistan's Camp Leatherneck cost $36 million and was ``a 
     total waste of U.S. taxpayer funds,'' SIGAR's report said in 
     May 2015.
       The facility in Helmand province--named because it measured 
     64,000 square feet--was intended to support the U.S. troop 
     surge of 2010.
       However, a year before its construction, the very general 
     in charge of the surge asked that it not be built because the 
     existing facilities were ``more than sufficient,'' the 
     watchdog said. But another general denied this cancellation 
     request, according to SIGAR, because he said it would not be 
     ``prudent'' to quit a project for which funds had already 
     been appropriated by Congress.
       Ultimately, construction did not begin until May 2011, two 
     months before the drawdown of the troops involved in surge. 
     Sopko found the ``well-built and newly furnished'' building 
     totally untouched in June 2013, with plastic sheets still 
     covering the furniture.
       ``Again, nobody was held to account,'' Sopko told NBC News, 
     adding it was a ``gross . . . really wasteful, extremely 
     wasteful amount of money.''
       He added: ``We have thrown too much money at the country. 
     We pour in money not really thinking about it.''
       A now-defunct Pentagon task force spent almost $40 million 
     on Afghanistan's oil, mining and gas industry--but no one 
     remembered to tell America's diplomats in Kabul, according to 
     SIGAR, citing a senior official at the U.S. embassy in the 
     city.
       In fact, the first the U.S. ambassador knew about the 
     multi-billion-dollar spend was when Afghan government 
     officials thanked him for his country's support, SIGAR said.
       The project, administered by the Task Force for Business 
     and Stability Operations (TFBSO), was part of a wider $488 
     million investment that also included the State Department 
     and USAID. These organizations ``failed to coordinate and 
     prioritize'' their work, which created ``poor working 
     relationships, and . . . potential sustainability problems,'' 
     according to SIGAR.
       It was, according to Sopko, ``a real disaster.''
       One USAID official told the watchdog it would take the U.S. 
     ``100 years'' to complete the necessary infrastructure and 
     training Afghanistan needs to completely develop these 
     industries.
       SIGAR said the U.S. military has been unable to provide 
     records answering ``the most basic questions'' surrounding 
     the mystery purchase and cancellation of eight patrol boats 
     for landlocked Afghanistan.
       The scant facts SIGAR were able to find indicated the boats 
     were bought in 2010 to be Used by the Afghan National Police, 
     and that they were intended to be deployed along the 
     country's northern river border with Uzbekistan.
       ``The order was cancelled--without explanation--nine months 
     later,'' SIGAR said. The boats were still sitting unused at a 
     Navy warehouse in Yorktown, Virginia, as of 2014.
       ``We bought in a navy for a landlocked country,'' Sopko 
     said.
       Despite the U.S. plowing some $7.8 billion into stopping 
     Afghanistan's drug trade,'' Afghan farmers are growing more 
     opium than ever before,'' SIGAR reported in December 2014.
       ``Poppy-growing provinces that were once declared 'poppy 
     free' have seen a resurgence in cultivation,'' it said, 
     noting that internationally funded irrigation projects may 
     have actually increased poppy growth in recent years.
       The ``fragile gains'' the U.S. has made on Afghan health, 
     education and rule of law were being put in ``jeopardy or 
     wiped out by the narcotics trade, which not only supports the 
     insurgency, but also feeds organized crime and corruption,'' 
     Sopko told U.S. lawmakers in January 2014.
       Afghanistan is the world's leader in the production of 
     opium. In 2013, the value of Afghan opium was $3 billion--
     equivalent to 15 percent of the country's GDP--according to 
     the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime.
       Sopko told NBC News the picture is no more optimistic 
     today. ``No matter which

[[Page H1809]]

     metric you use, this effort has been a real failure,'' he 
     said.
       The USAID-funded Shorandam Industrial Park in Kandahar 
     province was transferred to the Afghan government in 
     September 2010 with the intention of accommodating 48 
     business and hundreds of local employees. Four years later, 
     SIGAR inspectors found just one active company operating 
     there.
       This was due to the U.S. military building a power plant on 
     one-third of the industrial park to provide electricity to 
     nearby Kandahar City, causing ``entrepreneurs to shy away 
     from setting up businesses'' at the site, SIGAR said in its 
     report of April 2015.
       After the military withdrew in mid-2014, the investigators 
     were told that at least four Afghan businesses had moved into 
     the industrial park. However, SIGAR said that it could not 
     complete a thorough inspection because USAID's contract files 
     were ``missing important documentation.''
       The DOD spent nearly $82 million on nine incineration 
     facilities in Afghanistan--yet four of them never fired their 
     furnaces, SIGAR said in February 2015. These four dormant 
     facilities had eight incinerators between them and the 
     wastage cost $20.1 million.
       In addition, SIGAR inspectors said it was ``disturbing'' 
     that ``prohibited items,'' such as tires and batteries, 
     continued to be burned in Afghanistan's 251 burn pits. U.S. 
     military personnel were also exposed to emissions from these 
     pits ``that could have lasting negative health 
     consequences,'' the watchdog said.
       The Department of Defense said it was ``vitally interested 
     in exploring all possible ways to save taxpayer dollars and 
     ensure we are good stewards of government resources.''
       A spokesman added: ``We'll continue to work with SIGAR, and 
     other agencies, to help get to the bottom of any reported 
     issues or concerns.''
       A spokesman for Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani 
     declined to comment on this story.

  Mr. JONES. Madam Speaker, we have already spent more in Afghanistan 
than it cost to rebuild Europe after World War II. In fact, last week I 
asked my staff to draft a letter to Speaker Paul Ryan.
  In the letter, I asked the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, to meet 
with John Sopko, who is the Inspector General for Afghanistan 
Reconstruction, and listen to this absolute waste that is going on in 
Afghanistan.
  Yet, sometime soon we will mark up the NDAA, National Defense 
Authorization Act, and I will guarantee you there will be billions of 
dollars in OCO funds going to Afghanistan.
  There will be those of us on both sides of the aisle that would like 
to take that money out or significantly reduce the money. Last year it 
was over $43 billion in OCO funds, which is nothing but a slush fund.
  Madam Speaker, there is a famous line about Afghanistan. It says that 
Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires.
  I predict today--but I hope I am wrong--if we continue to spend and 
waste billions of dollars in Afghanistan, there will be a headstone in 
that graveyard that says: USA.
  I hope that does not happen. But we had better wake up, as Members of 
Congress, and stop supporting programs like money for Afghanistan that 
are a total waste of the taxpayers' money.
  Madam Speaker, I will ask God to continue to bless our men and women 
in uniform and ask God to continue to bless America.

                          ____________________