Monitor Iraq Contracts

As Iraq goes from a military to a financial battleground, billions of taxpayer dollars are at stake. Congress is stepping in to ensure that rebuilding doesn’t turn into cronyism for big business. Even the appearance of impropriety by the Pentagon and the U.S. Agency for International Development in awarding bids could sully the U.S. effort to turn Iraq into a functioning democracy.

Already, Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) and John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) are calling for a General Accounting Office investigation of whether Halliburton Co., which was headed by Vice President Dick Cheney for five years before he resigned in August 2000, received special treatment from the Pentagon in securing a contract.

There’s no evidence that Cheney influenced the contract. Still, as The Times’ Mark Fineman and Dana Calvo reported Sunday, many are suspicious about how Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root, in alliance with Houston-based Boots & Coots International Well Control, locked in a no-bid, two-year contract worth up to $7 billion for suppressing oil well fires.

Waxman and Dingell are also calling for an investigation of eight contracts awarded by the USAID. These contracts were expedited for what the agency called national security reasons, which also allowed it to skirt normal public bid requirements.

Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) unveiled legislation Thursday that would require the USAID to make public the documents it uses to exempt contracts from open competition.

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) has also inserted a valuable amendment into the war supplemental budget that would give the USAID inspector general $4.3 million to monitor and audit expenditures in Iraq. Essentially, Dodd’s proposal would allow the inspector general to open an office in Iraq to monitor how funds are distributed by contractors to subcontractors who do the actual work on the ground.

Without such supervision, taxpayers have no way of knowing how companies are spending the money the government hands out. Congress should ensure that Dodd’s amendment is fully funded.

The average homeowner wouldn’t hand over a pile of cash to a contractor without considering other bids. Nor would he or she be indifferent to how it was being spent. If the Bush administration isn’t willing to protect taxpayer dollars, Congress must.