The Republicans are at it again, twisting and confounding the issues, this time by making support for the hurricane survivors conditional upon support for the Administration's "long war."  The Republicans have missed the boat.  The critical moment to act in an effort to assist hurricane survivors is long overdue, for just yesterday, FEMA evicted the last of some 40,000 families of hurricane survivors from temporary housing assistance with no plan to transition them to more permanent housing.  Throwing mothers and children out on the street while lining the pockets of the wealthiest corporations; that is how Republicans do disaster relief, and I will not condone it.

Late yesterday, my office received word that one survivor facing eviction and having no place to go chose to commit suicide, as dozens of others have already done.  Lacking access to health care, scattered across the country away from familiar surroundings, their families torn apart, many elderly and ill persons have died, after surviving the Hurricane, under the strain and emotional trauma of facing an uncertain future in a strange place with little or no assistance from their government.

Today I am voting against HR 4939, the Bush Administration's Supplemental spending request, for several reasons.  The request is for $72 billion for the so-called "War on Terrorism," and $19 billion for Katrina rebuilding.  Much as I support the urgent need for Katrina relief, there is little guarantee that this new envelope of $19 billion will actually help those most in need, for there are no monies earmarked for rental assistance, which is simply required in order to prevent mass homelessness and insolvency among the survivors.  Yet the likelihood is very high that much if not most of these funds will once again line the pockets of many of the very same corporations profiting from war in Iraq. It has recently come to my attention that DynCorps, a company that failed to punish employees guilty of trafficking in young women, holding them as sex slaves, but instead punished the whistleblowers, has just been awarded a policing contract instead of hiring locals to do the work.

Furthermore, I cannot in good conscience vote for continued funding of an illegal war that has already cost the lives of thousands of US soldiers, tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq, over 2,500 Iraq Coalition soldiers, and which has put over 16,000 wounded American soldiers in hospitals.  I stand amazed that my colleagues in Congress can continue to rubber stamp such massive appropriations of taxpayer monies when we know that each time billions of dollars will be going to private contractors who have already been caught over-billing the American taxpayer, have admitted to involvement in bribery and kick-back schemes, and who have benefited from the supposedly "accidental misplacement" of $9 billion dollars by the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.

War profiteering was once considered unconscionable by this government.  Truman set up a commission after the Second World War to force war profiteers to yield their profits to be put toward programs beneficial to the public.  But now, we appropriate billions of dollars for them.  We spare no expense.  Vice President Cheney, former CEO of Halliburton, has led the charge for the completely unprecedented growth of privatizing functions of the armed forces by contracting them out to war profiteers.  Over 10% of U.S. military personnel now work for private firms.  Over 40 percent of all Pentagon contracts between 1998 and 2004, to the tune of $362 billion, were awarded on a no-bid basis.  One company alone, Halliburton, that still pays a salary to the Vice President in "deferred compensation," has been awarded over $10 billion in contracts to date.

A recent study by the Pentagon's Defense Contract Agency Audit discovered that the Halliburton Corporation overbilled the US taxpayer by $208 million for oil transports to the US Army in Iraq.  Such transports were also provided by the Pentagon's own Defense Energy Support Center (DESC), which charged 40 percent less for its services than Halliburton.  The argument for privatization typically puts forward the case that private businesses can do a more efficient job at providing services than the government.  One would think this would be grounds to cancel the contracts with Halliburton and save money by sticking with the DESC.  But instead the Pentagon, which had been withholding the $208 million pending the audit, gave fully $204 million of the total overbillings to Halliburton, the preeminent Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina profiteer.  The only tie that binds Iraq and Katrina is the money Halliburton will get!

But housing, health care and education for hurricane survivors, we are told, would be too expensive.

I would bet on it that those Pentagon officials who made this decision already have jobs waiting for them when they decide to slip through the revolving door between the DoD and private contractors.  President Eisenhower warned against allowing "undue influence" to this military complex.  "Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry," he wrote, "can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

Congressional oversight of Pentagon contracting has steadily eroded. Instead of doing its job, the Republican Congress keeps turning a blind eye to the recurring pattern of fraud, corruption, and abuse within the military contracting system.  American citizens as voters and taxpayers must say "no more."  No more corruption; no more waste, fraud, and abuse.  No more no-bid contracts in the Gulf Coast at the exclusion of minority-owned and small businesses.  No more supplemental requests for an endless war with that helps no one but the friends of the Bush Administration.  No more corporate profiteering from war and disaster.  It is time to demand that government put the needs of its citizens first.  I do that today.