David Obey: “with this bill, we will now have spent as much money in Iraq as we did in Vietnam. If you adjust for inflation, it is…”

“with this bill, we will now have spent as much money in Iraq as we did in Vietnam. If you adjust for inflation, it is now just about the equivalent. It seems to me that spending almost half a trillion dollars of the taxpayers' money is indefensible unless we are willing to see to it that that money is spent as well as we can possibly accomplish that fact. I guess it boils down to this: if Members are happy with reading day after day about stories that are published about waste and fraud and ripoffs by contractors in Iraq, if they are tired of reading about the insider deals and the single-source contracts for work to be done in Iraq, if a Republican-controlled Congress cannot bring itself to conduct a really vigorous investigation of a Republican administration, then they ought to vote ``no.'' But if you think that we ought to be doing now exactly as we were doing in World War II, when Harry Truman conducted the kind of investigation the gentleman from Massachusetts mentioned, if you think we ought to replicate that effort, then you vote ``yes.'' I would submit that the Roosevelt administration was not damaged by the investigations done by the Truman Committee, they were strengthened by it, because that meant they had more resources available to get the job done in defeating the Japanese and defeating the Nazis. I want to congratulate the gentleman from Massachusetts for the leadership that he has shown on this issue. Mr. Chairman, I urge an ``aye'' vote.…”