What's a few $ trillion $ in the War on Terra?

Tena spots this:

INSTITUTE INDEX — Tax Dollars at Work

* Percent that state income tax collected from corporations has dropped since 1989: 40%
* Amount of federal revenue lost due to corporate offshore tax havens: $255 billion
* Amount lost from corporate underreporting of income: $30 billion
* Of 275 largest corporations, number that didn't pay any taxes at least one year between 2001 and 2003: 82
* Amount of spending the Pentagon admits it cannot account for: $2.3 trillion
* Amount this represents for every person in the United States: $8,000
* Amount that Halliburton is known to have overcharged taxpayers on one of its Iraq contracts: $212 million
* Amount of federal money earmarked for Wal-Mart in 2005 transportation bill to widen the road to their headquarters: $37 million
* Number of hours it takes for Wal-Mart to make $37 million in profits: 31


Now that's a Top Secret!

Some Democratic members of the Democratic Party are pissed.

Mr. Chairman, we know the right questions to ask: about Iraq, the budget, waste, fraud and abuse by contractors including Halliburton. After seeing scenes from an Iraqi prison, we know what we don't know. What are we going to do about all this?

We know the right questions to ask, but we also know these questions will not be answered--unless we reach back into recent history and reinstitute an independent, bi-partisan internal watchdog.

In the 1940s, the Truman Committee saved the government and the American people $15 billion dollars. They asked the right questions and were empowered to get the answers. The American people got what they paid for and someone made sure of it. There was truth in government. There was trust in government.

We don't have that kind of faith, confidence, or oversight anymore. Instead of scrutiny, there is subterfuge.

Already, America has spent $200 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet two years after the start of the war, many troops and their transports still do not have adequate protection.

This week, the Administration will use the supplemental process to obtain new billions for Iraq. The fact is, the supplemental process carries less scrutiny than the normal budget process.

We know the right questions to ask, but getting the answers is a different story.

Billions of dollars have been awarded in non-competitive contracts. Recently, the military acknowledged that 8 billion in cold, hard cash is missing in Iraq. It's happened before in Iraq, and unless something changes, there is no reason to believe it won't happen again.

Halliburton has already been found to have overcharged the Pentagon by billions of dollars for providing meals to soldiers and importing fuel. They're still getting paid and no one really knows if we are getting what the American people are paying for.

On a rare occasion, the Defense Secretary admits there is an issue; quoting Secretary Rumsfeld: "According to some estimates, we (DOD) cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions." The Pentagon's own auditors admit that the military cannot account for as much as 1/4 of what it spends. Defense makes up half of all the discretionary spending in the budget.

Very nice. I voted for Jim McDermott years ago when I lived in Seattle, and he makes me proud now. It's good to know there a still a few Democrats with a spine.