This is great news, something Jim Webb talked a lot about during his campaign in 2006. I congratulate him for this accomplishment, and hope that the "modern day Truman committee" ferrets out as much waste, fraud, and abuse in wartime contracting as is humanly possible.
PRESIDENT SIGNS INTO LAW WEBB-McCASKILL COMMISSION ON WAR CONTRACTING ACCOUNTABILITYWashington, D.C. - The Fiscal Year 2008 National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law by the President today, includes a historic provision to improve accountability in wartime contracting sponsored by Senators Jim Webb (D-VA) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO).
The Webb-McCaskill amendment, introduced jointly last year with the senators' seven Democratic freshman colleagues, creates an independent, bipartisan "Commission on Wartime Contracting" charged with addressing the systemic problems associated with the federal government's wartime-support, reconstruction, and private security contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The provision requires that the Commission be fully established 120 days after passage of the defense bill. The next step in establishing the Commission will be the appointment of eight commissioners by congressional senior leadership and the President. During this process, Senate and House leadership will consult with the chairmen and ranking members of the Armed Services, Foreign Relations, Homeland Security, and Government Reform Committees as required by the legislation."I am pleased that our Commission to bring accountability back into our wartime contracting will finally become a reality," said Senator Webb. "I look forward to working with the Administration and my colleagues in Congress to ensure that the Commission comes to life as quickly as possible."
The Commission is modeled after the "Truman Committee" which investigated defense contracts during World War II. The creation of then-Senator Harry Truman, the Committee is credited with savings of $15 billion (1943 dollars) and preventing the loss of life of countless U.S. service members.
"The Commission on Wartime Contracting will build on Senator Truman's legacy," said Webb. "Ultimately, it will play a major role remedying the major problems we find in wartime-support contracting today and save American taxpayer dollars for years to come."
"When America put a new majority in the U.S. Senate it demanded, among other things, accountability for the record fraud, waste and abuse in wartime defense contracting and today, with the President's signature on the defense bill, we take an important, hard fought step toward meeting that demand," Senator McCaskill said.
Specifically, the Webb-McCaskill provision:
* Establishes an independent, bipartisan eight-member Commission on Wartime Contracting to study federal agency contracting for logistics support, reconstruction, and security functions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Commission will issue interim and final reports on its findings and recommendations, including an evaluation of which functions are inherently governmental and which functions are appropriate for performance by contractors in a contingency operation, especially whether providing security in an areas of combat operations is inherently governmental.
* Requires an assessment of the extent of waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement of wartime contracts, and the extent to which those responsible have been held accountable. The Commission will have the authority to refer to the Department of Justice any violation or potential violation of law it identifies.
* Expands the jurisdiction of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) and a newly-created Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) beyond reconstruction to include security contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. It also requires an expanded series of audits of wartime contracts by the inspectors general of the Department of Defense and other executive agencies.
A second amendment offered by Senators Webb and McCaskill also was included in the defense bill. It requires the Department of Defense to strengthen its policies regarding private security contractors, such as Blackwater. The amendment directs the Department of Defense to develop procedures to mark contractor vehicles so that they are more easily identifiable by Iraqi civilians and military personnel, keep records of private security personnel, maintain all regulations applying to contractors in a single, accessible location, such as a website; and ensure that private security personnel are briefed on and understand their obligation to comply with applicable U.S., Iraqi, and international laws, and rules on the use of force.
The provision also establishes a process for cultural training of security contractors, as well as training on working with the U.S. military and Iraqi nationals.
Even if they have absolutely nothing to do with our bad foreign (interventionist) policy, which I don't agree with, they profit from the misery of others. And they profit way too much.
Our nation's debt is piling sky high, and the only way out of this pile of debt will eventually be increased taxes. You can't wish this debt away. I suppose we could just print more money and devalue American spending power.
American tax payers have been robbed blind by these war contractors. Sure we need them to help support our troops, but we could do without the fraud, waste, and abuse.
Spurred by similar stories of waste, fraud and abuse in war contracting, the Senate unanimously passed an amendment by Webb, McCaskill and 30 co-sponsors to the National Defense Authorization Bill to create an independent, bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting. The amendment also expands the role of SIGIR to conduct audits of wartime support contracts for logistics and security functions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Last night when the President signed the 2008 defense authorization bill into law, he included a "presidential signing statement"-which singled out 4 of 2,887 sections which the White House says "purport to impose requirements that could inhibit the President's ability to carry out his constitutional obligations to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, to protect national security, to supervise the executive branch, and to execute his authority as Commander in Chief. The executive branch shall construe such provisions in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President."Among these four was the Webb-McCaskill Commission on Wartime Contracting, charged with addressing the systemic problems associated with the federal government's wartime-support, reconstruction, and private security contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Commission-intended to make government more accountable to the American taxpayer-is modeled after the "Truman Committee" which investigated defense contracts during World War II. The Truman Committee is credited with savings of $15 billion (1943 dollars) in taxpayer dollars.
Ugh, get this guy (Bush) OUT OF HERE!
Senator Webb delivered the following remarks today from the Senate floor, with respect to the Commission on Wartime Contracting and the President's signing statement:"Yesterday, the President signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act, and with it a Commission on Wartime Contracting, which Senator McCaskill and I jointly introduced early last year. This is a very important piece of legislation.
"It will put into place an independent bipartisan Commission, with a two-year sunset date, jointly selected by Democrats and Republicans in the Senate and the House and by the Administration. This is to be a Commission filled with experts, not of Senators or political people, to examine wartime contracting that has taken place since our invasion of Iraq. It will play a major role in remedying a broad range of fraud, waste, and abuse that we all know has occurred during this period.
"Now, to my surprise, when the President signed this legislation yesterday, he issued a signing [statement] regarding the Wartime Contracting Commission, saying, that it 'purports to impose requirements that could inhibit the President's ability to carry out his constitutional obligations to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, to protect national security, to supervise the executive branch, and to execute his authority as Commander in Chief.' He goes on to say, 'The executive branch shall construe such provisions in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President.'
"In other words, the President of the United States who has been in charge of the conduct of this war and whose administration has been in charge of executing these contracts, supervising them, making sure that they meet the requirements of fairness in the lawis now saying that he believes that a legislative body can enact a law that he can choose to ignore because he says it would interfere with his responsibility to supervise a war as Commander-and-Chief.
"I am at a total loss here. I am amazed to see this kind of language employed with respect to this legislation.
"The Commission was put into place with broad bipartisan and bicameral support, with the intention of studying systemic problems. I would think that these are the sorts of problems that this President would want to root out.
"The Commission's historic precedent goes back to the Truman Committee of World War II. Then-Senator Harry Truman wanted to look at wartime waste, fraud, and abuse so that the American government could get a proper handle on the federal spending that was going into mobilization and the projects that were being put on the line. And we certainly didn't see President Franklin Roosevelt trying to say that the Truman Committee's work was going to interfere with his ability to conduct World War II.
"To the contrary, the President, during that war, saw that this was the type of thing that he needed in order to bring the right sort of supervision and the right sort of accountability that might eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse.
"We don't quite know what the Administration intends with this sort of language, but I want all my colleagues to be aware of it and to be aware that it potentially is an impingement on the rights of this legislative body-in effect saying that the President has the authority to ignore a law that is now passed, a law that he has now signed.
"We are going to go forward with this Commission. We are going to work with the Administration, we hope, to set it up. We are going to move as rapidly as we can, because the clock is ticking in terms of the statute of limitations on some of the charges that might be filed.
"And I would hope that the people of this country understand that we want to do this for the good of the American people. We have a responsibility to make sure that the nation's purse strings have been properly taken care of and that we are acting as proper stewards of America's taxpayers.
"If the Administration would like to explain to us what their constitutional issue is with a piece of legislation that the President has just signed, we would be happy to hear that. In the meantime, we are moving forward with this Commission. It is vitally important to accountability in the government, and I'm very proud to have introduced it. We are marching forward. And with that I yield the floor."