THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

The House held a hearing on the President's request for money to fight old and new wars in places we don't really give a shit about. Because this is an election year, members from both parties are puffing up and expressing outrage and dismay at this.

Pentagon leaders faced a bipartisan barrage of skeptical questions Wednesday from lawmakers over President Barack Obama’s request for $58.6 billion in emergency funds for conflicts in Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine and beyond.

Republican and Democratic members of the House Armed Services Committee said Americans are war-weary after almost 13 years of conflict in South Asia and the Middle East, fearful of being drawn into new wars and mistrustful of the Obama administration.

Rep. Walter Jones, a North Carolina Republican, said he opposed giving Afghanistan tens of billions in new money because so much U.S. aid over the last decade has been lost to corruption.

“I look at the absolute waste of life first and money second, and here you are asking for more money,” Jones told Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work and other senior Pentagon officials. “American taxpayers are absolutely frustrated and broke because of these overseas activities. I do not understand how you can sit here today and ask for this money with such waste, fraud and abuse going on across Afghanistan.”

Rep. Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat who lost both legs in November 2004 during combat in Iraq, criticized the funding proposal, called the Overseas Contingency Operations request, for coming to Congress just months after the Pentagon’s basic budget package and for having too few spending controls.

“It seems like this has become just another slush fund where you can just transfer money between accounts,” Duckworth said...

Even some Obama allies on the committee said the president needs to do a better job of explaining to Congress and their constituents why the extra money for all the overseas missions is needed, especially his controversial request for $500 million to train moderate Syrian rebels.

“You need to do better than (saying), ‘It’s classified, so we really can’t talk about it,’” said Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state, the armed services panel’s senior Democrat. “For the United States Congress to vote to train and equip rebel forces is a big damn deal. This is more for the White House (than the Pentagon), but sell it, because if you don’t, we can’t pass it.”

So now they are on record showing concern for the amount and the uses and in the end they will all vote yes for this further waste of money.