Biden stonewalls Congress on study of his Afghan fiasco

 National Review:

House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer sent a letter to several Biden administration officials on Tuesday informing them that the administration’s “lack of cooperation” with the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) is “unacceptable.”

Comer said SIGAR has been a “critical partner in helping the Committee assess issues related to security, humanitarian, economic, and governance assistance to the Afghan people” as the House panel investigates the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

Inspector General John Sopko, head of SIGAR, testified before the committee last month that he could not say “the extent to which our government may be funding the Taliban and other nefarious groups with U.S. taxpayer dollars” because of the refusal of the State Department and USAID to “fully cooperate with SIGAR.”

Since the withdrawal in August 2021, the U.S. has “provided or otherwise made available” $8 billion to assist the Afghan people, including $2.2 billion for humanitarian and development efforts and $3.5 billion in Afghan Central Bank reserves transferred to the newly created Afghan Fund to stabilize Afghanistan’s economy, Comer writes.

“The Committee is not confident the Biden Administration can guarantee that funding will make it to its intended recipients and not the Taliban or other sources of terrorism,” the chairman said.

SIGAR has made the Committee aware of refusals to cooperate by the State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Department of Defense, and the U.S. Department of Treasury.
...

The lack of response from the Biden administration suggests it has something to hide.  It was one of the most embarrassing episodes in US history. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more