Spending our money wisely

WWII was a bonanza for many companies as the government issued contracts almost willy-nilly. In some of these contracts the government was being ripped off. Enter Senator Harry Truman. He led an investigative committee that looked into many of these contracts and was able to return a significant amount of money to the public coffers from those companies that were considered war profiteers.

In the Spring of this year a bill was introduced to create a similar committee to look into the contracts let for our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Although the bill was sponsored by a Democrat and a Republican, it was defeated largely on a party line vote.

It is becoming more and more evident that there has been considerable waste and unseemly profiteering in fighting our 21st century wars, while, at the same time, we cannot adequately arm our troops to fight those wars. And, it looks like financing the recovery from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita will also result in a fair amount of boondoggling.

Hundreds of billions of our dollars are being spent with very little oversight that the money is being spent wisely.Why does our government refuse to see that our money is being spent wisely?