While the spike in oil prices is forcing Americans to reach deeper into their pocketbooks, it is also padding the government treasury in Iraq. With the world’s third-largest reserves of crude oil, Iraq is awash in cash even though the war-torn nation is struggling to regain its footing.
One would think Iraq would be spending its financial windfall to rebuild its ravaged cities. But a Government Accountability Office report issued to Congress last week painted a different picture.
The investigative arm of Congress found that since the 2003 invasion the United States has appropriated $48 billion to help stabilize and reconstruct Iraq. Of that amount $23.2 billion was spent on the security, oil, electricity and water sectors. Iraq, from 2005 through April, had spent only $3.9 billion on those sectors.
It is understandable that the United States continues to help rebuild a nation whose infrastructure has been decimated by its own military as well as by its enemies. It is unfathomable, though, to find that Iraq is not doing all it can to help itself.
The GAO estimates that Iraq will have a budget surplus of as much as $50.3 billion this year. Yet its government has devoted only about 1 percent of its expenditures to maintain buildings, water and electricity installations and weapons. Overall only 10 percent of its budget over the past three years was devoted to reconstruction.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., made sense when he stated: “It is inexcusable for U.S. taxpayers to continue to foot the bill for projects the Iraqis are fully capable of funding themselves.”
The Bush administration should demand immediately that the Iraqi government begin investing more money in its own future rather than sit back and watch Americans continue to pay most of the bill.
With our own dire funding needs, such as in education and transportation, we can certainly put our money to better use. That is a point the president should drive home in the short time he has left in the White House.
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