Sherrod Brown: “We know that we are spending $1 billion a week in Iraq. We know that $300 million, 30 percent of that $1 billion a week…”

“We know that we are spending $1 billion a week in Iraq. We know that $300 million, 30 percent of that $1 billion a week is going to private contractors, most of them friends of the President, most of them major contributors to the President. One of them, Halliburton, used to be the company where the Vice President was CEO and a company that still pays the Vice President $13,000 a month. We know all of that. We know about the corruption. We know about the waste. We know it continues. But what bothers me, what bothers me probably the most about that is what Halliburton and these private contractors are not doing. Last month, early this month, I had a meeting with 25 families in Akron, Ohio, in my district on a Saturday morning. It was going to be about an hour and a half meeting and ended up being over 3 hours, with 25 families who had loved ones in Iraq. What I heard was how our government, and our government, unfortunately, now includes a privatized military worth $300 million out of $1 billion that goes to Halliburton, and our government has simply failed these service men and women.”