Brian Jones: “Last week, The Washington Post ran a story titled, ``Defense Firm that Employed Drunk, High Contractors in Afghanistan…”

“Last week, The Washington Post ran a story titled, ``Defense Firm that Employed Drunk, High Contractors in Afghanistan May Have Wasted $135 Million in Taxpayer Dollars,'' by Colby Itkowitz. Colby writes: ``The defense contractor investigated in 2012 after cellphone videos surfaced of its employees drunk and high on drugs in Afghanistan may have misused almost $135 million of U.S. taxpayer money, an audit finds.'' The Hill further reported that: ``The company also did not comply with Federal procurement law, the audit found.'' Mr. Speaker, I have been coming down to this floor for weeks to highlight the waste, fraud, and abuse in Afghanistan, which John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, has reported is worse now than ever. The National Defense Authorization Act, which the House passed last week, authorized $42 billion for Afghanistan, which is one of the reasons I did not vote for the bill. Why do we continue to spend billions of American taxpayer dollars in Afghanistan when infrastructure all over the United States is rapidly deteriorating? This past weekend, CBS' ``60 Minutes'' ran a segment on America's failing infrastructure and reported that 70,000 bridges in the United States have been deemed structurally deficient, according to the Federal Government. That is one bridge out of every nine.…”