[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 17]
[House]
[Page 23981]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




            THE GOLD-PLATING AND WAR PROFITEERING CONTINUES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I brought something here tonight to show 
to the American people. This document, which has become publicly 
available, is the coalition provisional authority request to 
rehabilitate and reconstruct Baghdad, Iraq. Published accordingly, 
Baghdad, Iraq, is a gold-plated guide to war profiteering. I urge each 
and every tax-paying American citizen to get a copy to see where the 
$20.3 billion that President Bush wants to borrow in their name to send 
to Iraq will be spent.
  We have already had some examples of just incredible waste. There was 
a cement plant in northern Iraq needed repair. Mr. Bremer sent in his 
experts. They said it would cost $15 million. The Iraqis could not 
wait, and they went ahead and repaired it for $80,000.
  There was the $25 million spent to rebuild police stations in Basra. 
The Iraqis estimate they could have done it for $5 million or less.
  Then there was the $5,000-per-day contract Mr. Bremer signed to feed 
the Iraqi governing council, all 25 of them. I guess we were going to 
fly over catered meals from the United States of America. The governing 
council was so appalled at that waste of money, even though it was 
being spent by the United States of America, borrowed by the President 
on behalf of the American people, they cancelled the contract, got some 
local food for a fraction of the cost.
  Then, of course, on the governing council, we have Mr. Ahmad Al-
Barak, and he estimates that in cases the savings could be a factor of 
10. Where they spend $1 billion, we would spend $100 billion. If we 
carry that formula through, instead of borrowing $20.3 billion on 
behalf of the American people and spending it to rebuild Iraq, as the 
President wants to do, we could do it for $2.3 billion or less.
  There are other things in this new proposal that are a bit strange. 
There is the proposal of $33,000 per pickup truck delivered in Iraq. I 
went online just to kind of check out a pretty nice 2003 new Ford F-
150, two door regular cab, XL, two-wheel drive, style side, with the AC 
and the automatic transmission and of course destination charge, 
$17,817. Does not have armor plating, but then again neither do the 
Humvees that this administration gave to our troops who are being 
killed on a daily basis.
  There are other things that I would question here, $20 million to 
develop and train a cadre of business people in Iraq. That is a 4-week 
course, $10,000 each. By equivalent it would cost $4,000 to send them 
to Harvard, or if we send them to a continuing-education course at a 
community college in my district, we could put them through a good 
course, one term, with credits, for $400. But the Bush administration 
wants to spend $10,000 per Iraqi, $20 million borrowed from the 
American people, spent to give these $10,000 4-week courses to Iraqis.
  Then, of course, there is a lot of, like, well, we have an obligation 
to all the damage we did to the country. I guess we blew up their 
wireless Internet network. Whoops, wait a minute. They did not have 
wireless Internet network, did they? No, they did not, but an essential 
part of this reconstruction effort is that we provide a wireless 
Internet network for all the Iraqis and their laptop computers. I do 
not know how many Iraqis have laptop computers, but I think that is 
somewhere else in the request perhaps. Although we cannot equip our 
kids, our schools with laptop computers, we are going to give them to 
Iraqis.
  There are other things that have more merit arguably, $5.8 billion to 
rebuild their power grid and electrical system. I thought, well, maybe 
we did that. I found out it was not necessarily for damage we caused. 
In fact, Mr. Bremer was quoted saying, well, I have been into the 
plants, they have got these boilers from the 1950s and 1960s; they are 
holding them together with duct tape. What does that have to do with 
the war? What obligation does that put on the American people? Why 
should we borrow money on behalf of the American people, though it will 
be repaid and there is a lot of talk about children and grandchildren, 
by tax paying Americans today, children and grandchildren of tax paying 
Americans, to give the Iraqis state-of-the-art cycled turbines to 
generate electricity in Iraq? They cannot use the old system; we cannot 
just put that back together for a fraction of cost. No, they have got 
to have a brand new system. Of course, here in the United States of 
America where lights blinked out in the West a few years ago, blinked 
out in the East this year, the President cannot find any money to 
invest in our system and keep our lights on, but we can give them a 
state-of-the-art system there in Iraq.
  If we spent this $20.3 billion on infrastructure and critical needs 
in the United States of America. Even if we borrowed it on behalf of 
the American people and spent it on behalf of the American people, we 
could provide 1 million jobs in this country. This provides for nothing 
but war profiteering to generous contributors to the Bush 
administration.

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