Congress has already committed billions of dollars to Iraq, necessary to help fight the insurgency, rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure, and bring some semblance of stability to the country’s economy. And yet, the Bush administration has only spent a fraction of the money.
After more than a year of difficulties, the pace of contracting for Iraqi reconstruction projects picked up substantially over the past three months, but U.S. authorities have still spent only a fraction of the rebuilding money allocated by Congress, according to a new report.
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Of the $24.1 billion that Congress has allocated for Iraq’s reconstruction over the past two years, $13.4 billion has now been obligated to rebuilding contracts, the report said. Three months ago, 30.6 percent of the reconstruction funds had been earmarked for specific projects. Now, that total has risen to 40.7 percent, the report said.
But only about $5.2 billion has been spent. In the quarterly report released three months ago, about $3 billion had been spent. Congress’s high-profile allocation of $18.4 billion, approved in October 2003, is still largely untapped. About $1.6 billion of that has been spent, up from $400 million three months ago, according to the inspector general’s office.
Worse yet, the money that is being spent is being wasted on fraud and abuse.
U.S. investigators have opened more than 100 cases this year into alleged abuse involving the billions of dollars in U.S. and Iraqi funding to rebuild Iraq, says an auditors’ report that is to be released today.
Is there anything, anything at all, that the administration has done correctly in Iraq?