[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 18433-18434]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I am going to speak about the Oman Free 
Trade Agreement, but I wanted to first respond to my colleague from New 
Hampshire who was on the floor of the Senate earlier this morning 
saying there is no problem with respect to what we are accomplishing 
here. He listed various accomplishments. He said: The only things we 
cannot accomplish are the things we are obstructed from accomplishing 
because the minority will not let us.
  First of all, that is not the case because, with respect to oversight 
hearings--which was the subject I raised and my colleague from Illinois 
raised

[[Page 18434]]

this morning, oversight hearings--nobody is obstructing anybody from 
holding oversight hearings. That is the responsibility of the 
committees and the chairmen of the committees, to hold oversight 
hearings.
  I have held some in the Democratic Policy Committee because the 
regular committees won't hold them, but let me describe a few of the 
things I have found in the hearings I have held--some big, some small, 
all of them, in my judgment, cheating American taxpayers: Contractors 
in Iraq paying $45 for a case of Coca-Cola; contractors in Iraq paying 
$7,500 for a 1-month lease on an SUV; contractors in Iraq who are 
buying towels for the troops, and instead of buying the hand towels for 
our troops to use that would cost a relatively small amount of money, 
they triple the amount that the taxpayers pay for these hand towels for 
our soldiers because they want the company name on them, Kellogg Brown 
and Root, embroidered on the towels. So they triple the cost of the 
towels.
  Henry Bunting came and testified about that. He said he was the 
purchaser. They said: Purchase the towels with the embroidered name of 
our company on it. He said it costs more. They said: Don't bother about 
that; it doesn't matter. It is a cost-plus contract. The taxpayer pays 
for it.
  The list of abuses is endless. At any point along the way did anybody 
say we ought to look into this, issue subpoenas? No, no; dead silence.
  Twenty-five tons, 50,000 pounds, of nails are laying in the sands of 
Iraq because the contractor ordered the wrong size. What did they do? 
Dumped them out. It doesn't matter, the taxpayers are paying for all of 
that.
  There were $85,000 new trucks left to be torched, put on fire on the 
side of the road because they had a flat tire and they did not have a 
tool to fix them. The contractor says: That is not a problem. The 
taxpayers will pay for that.
  Serving food to the soldiers? The contractor that gets the contract 
to provide food for the soldiers is providing food that has out-of-date 
stamps on the food. It doesn't matter. Serve it to the soldiers anyway.
  Yesterday, a woman came forward who worked in Iraq, as I mentioned 
earlier today, Mrs. McBride. She said they were charging the Government 
five times the amount of money, five times the billings of the number 
of soldiers who were using the recreational facilities. They were 
double counting and triple counting and, in some cases, submitting 
forms with five times the number of people. Why? To inflate the cost, 
to extract money from the American taxpayer.
  All of this is going on and nobody seems to care. Oversight hearings? 
You show me where the oversight hearings have been held. Show me. They 
have not been held because nobody wants to embarrass anybody around 
here. We have one-party rule--in the White House, House, Senate. Nobody 
wants to embarrass anybody.
  You have sole-source, no-bid contracts given at the Pentagon. The top 
civilian official, the top person in the Pentagon who rose to the top 
civilian level in the Pentagon as a contracting officer, who everyone 
said is one of the finest contracting officers in the Pentagon, do you 
know what she said? She said: The awarding of these sole-source, no-bid 
contracts to Halliburton is the most substantial abuse that I have seen 
in my service in the public arena.
  What happened to her? Nobody cares.
  Under the reconstruction program, I am told, we, the American 
taxpayers, spent $18 billion for reconstruction for Iraq. We ordered an 
air conditioner for a room in Iraq, and then it went to a contractor, a 
subcontractor, another subcontractor, and pretty soon the American 
taxpayer paid for air conditioners and that room now has a ceiling 
fan--yes, a ceiling fan. It is just unbelievable what is going on. 
Again, nobody seems to care.
  I mentioned before that in the 1940s, Harry Truman was a Senator in 
this Chamber, and he put together the Truman Committee. It was 
bipartisan. They went after waste, fraud, and abuse. They wouldn't 
tolerate it. I am sure Franklin Delano Roosevelt was furious that a 
Congress was nipping at his heels, a Congress of his own party nipping 
at his heels on these issues. It didn't matter. Harry Truman, 
Republicans and Democrats together, went after it.
  I proposed three or four times in the Senate to have votes to 
establish a select committee to do just that, but, sorry, no dice. 
Nobody wants anything to do with this issue.
  I will come to the floor and give a list of what we have discovered 
in 10 hearings and see if anybody stands up to say: Yes, that makes 
sense; we support all that. None of this makes sense. It cries out, it 
begs for leadership. This undermines American soldiers and it cheats 
American taxpayers and it is unbelievable what is going on and nobody 
seems to care very much. So when I have the opportunity to hear someone 
say: We haven't held oversight hearings because we have been 
obstructed--nonsense. Or: We have held oversight hearings--nonsense 
again. Neither excuse washes. Nobody is minding the store. Nobody is 
watching the till.
  The fact is, American taxpayers are taking a bath--and it is not just 
the taxpayers. It is water connected to the Euphrates River taking 
water to the military installations in Iraq. And, yes, the top American 
in the company, Halliburton, who is responsible for moving nonpotable 
water to the soldiers in the military installations in Iraq, is the 
American who wrote the report. I have seen the report. What he said was 
the nonpotable water that is provided to the soldiers for the purpose 
of showering and brushing their teeth and washing their hands and doing 
the kinds of things they do was more contaminated than raw water coming 
from the Euphrates River. And their internal report says: This was a 
near miss. This was a near miss. It could have caused death or mass 
sickness.
  This event, which was a near miss, could have caused death or massive 
illness, it has been denied that it even happened by the company. The 
Pentagon doesn't seem to be very interested. The company denies it 
happened, despite the fact that we have it in writing from the person 
who was in charge and who still works for the company. It is 
unbelievable.
  I didn't come to talk about that, but when I hear people say there 
has been aggressive oversight, or any oversight in this Congress--it is 
a sham. It is not the case.

                          ____________________