Political Quotes

“for some time now a bipartisan group of Senators expressed concern about the letting of billions of dollars in Iraqi reconstruction contracts without competitive bidding. We have worked very closely with the chair of the Armed Services Committee, Chairman Warner, and with Senator Collins, who chairs the Governmental Affairs Committee. We have been able to attach an amendment to the Defense authorization bill requiring the disclosure of awards that involve closed-bid or no-bid accounts. But the fact is, as the legislative process goes forward, too much money is now moving out of public coffers into private hands with too little assurance that those hands have won their contracts fairly. As a result, today Senator Clinton and I are requesting the immediate public disclosure of all documents relating to USAID's decision to exempt Iraqi contracting from full and competitive bidding. In addition, Senator Clinton and myself are asking Defense Secretary Rumsfeld for explanations regarding particularly troubling contracts that have recently come to light and have been awarded by his Department. Recently, a number of Senators have returned from Iraq. Every one of them I have heard discussing their trip, Democrats and Republicans alike, have concluded that the U.S. military will be spending more time in that country than originally calculated. The work to rebuild that ravaged nation will be more difficult rather than less so.”