Representative Steve King is a Hypocrite!

OK, you knew that one already, too.

Apparently, Steve King is fine with massive financial waste and fraud, so long as it’s undertaken as part of a man-made disaster (as opposed to a natural one like Hurricane Katrina).

In a fascinating recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report dated September 21, 2005 (and available on the agency’s website), the government’s own financial watchdogs criticize the Department of Defense (DOD) for its surprisingly lax accounting procedures while fighting the so-called Global War on Terror (GWOT). Despite having already spent some $191 billion on GWOT over the course of the past four years, DOD apparently still hasn’t gotten around to regularizing and updating its procedures for reporting costs associated with the conflict. The GAO, for instance, cited cases where DOD “materially overstated” costs or committed “inadvertent double counting” of costs. Due to DOD’s overall failure to update its spending reporting system in light of current hostilities in Afghanistan and Iraq, GAO notes, “neither DOD nor Congress can reliably know how much the war is costing and details on how appropriately funds are being spent, or have historical date useful in considering future funding needs” [emphasis mine].

In other words, the kids are in the cookie jar and nobody is making much of an effort to stop them! Granted, the kids are heavily armed, and their parents are making a financial killing through their investments in Cookies, Inc….

And where is our Representative Lunatic Steve King to ride to the rescue and vote against such financial irresponsibility? AWOL, alas.

King can vote to uphold principle when it involves America’s minority poor suffering from a natural disaster (Hurricane Katrina), but King seems quite willing to jettison his supposed principles when the disaster is a man-made one (the Iraq War) courtesy of his beloved Bush Administration. But maybe I’m being too hard on him. After all, he wouldn’t be the first (or last) elected politician to prove a brazen hypocrite. Moreover, after his show vote for fiscal responsibility over Katrina Relief, I suspect he’s busy burning the midnight oil drawing up that perfect disaster relief spending plan he complained was so lacking. Of course, it has been a month, and Katrina’s victims are still waiting…

Peace!
Historian