Gross Mismanagements: $13.7 Billion of U.S./Iraqi Reconstruction Dollars Lost, Stolen & Wasted & They Want to GO after Tax Breaks/Exclusions for More Money to Spend & Waste:

Gross Mismanagements: $13.7 Billion of U.S./Iraqi Reconstruction Dollars Lost, Stolen & Wasted & They Want to GO after Tax Breaks/Exclusions for More Money to Spend & Waste:

By Marc Chamot

If the United States were a corporate business entity, it would have gone broke and OUT of business long ago. And CEO politicians “fired” and run out of town by now. But reality of things, we’ve got a very wasteful government, who are wasting billions of dollars without accounting for any of it.

Unlike corporations, who live and die by sales, government is always looking for more money, any where they can get it, regardless of the wastes and thereby increasing taxes, or by closing tax loopholes deemed unnecessary.

The big talk now is about extending the Bush tax cuts. But my dear friends; the facts of life, tax breaks, tax loopholes and tax exclusions, whatever we call them, both conservatives and liberals embrace them equally and just as strong but for different reasons.

Conservative Republicans, say corporate tax loopholes stimulate growths and jobs. While liberals say tax breaks stimulate help for the poor. Democrats like them, because they are ways to enact “public” programs and Republicans see it as tax cuts.

There’s no question that tax breaks or tax loopholes help everybody around. The Feds could simply eliminate tax breaks, to help eliminate the 1.3 trillion dollars deficit this year. To some accounts tax breaks, has become the biggest single spending item in the Federal budget.

And to other accounts, it’s bigger than the defense budget and bigger than any appropriations, such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. In California alone, tax breaks are costing the state 41 billion dollars a year, twice its budget deficit.

But what would California do if they were given more money? They, the Liberal/Progressives would spend it on public employees and their unions and with the left-over, they’d put it into social services. The money would be spent, not saved or CUT.

“Every time you provide special tax subsidies/breaks for some groups, like for healthcare, housing, child care or for the oil industries, you’re initially raising taxes on everyone else.” The costliest tax breaks or tax exclusions in the nation is for employer provided health insurance costing $177 billion, then mortgage interests deductions, costing $104 billion, 401 K plans costing $67 billion and with earned income tax credits, for the poor costing $57 billion.

There’s no doubt tax breaks mushroomed under George Bush and Republicans, but Obama and company followed suit, especially for their “green” jobs and for environmentalist’s carbon policies, more for healthcare and so on.

But now, it’s becoming a bigger fight for whose exclusions do we take away. The liberals want to hit on the corporate tax loopholes (rich), while conservatives want to hit on the less meaningful ones, other than their own.

But let’s give these tax breaks a break! Okay, that’s all fine and dandy. But when we find out about Iraqi money thefts and wastes, such as the missing $8.7 billion dollars of Iraqi money, and plus our own wasted $5 billion dollars of American tax payer dollars going for U.S. reconstruction aid to Iraq, which have been totally wasted and this tells me NO more money for YOU, the “ungovernable” government.

Any corporate entities’ would go OUT of business with 13.7 Billion dollars kinds of gross mismanagements and government would to.

It all makes me re-think my ideas to why I’m or “we’re” going to give the Feds more of our and my money. This is sheer incompetence coming from our government; no wonder majority of Americans see U.S. congress as lowest forms of life, even lower to amoebas, the lowest form of LIFE.

Why haven’t there been any congressional investigations over the missing $8.7 billion dollars? Who are they covering up for? What are they hiding? And why have we thrown away $5 billion, who in the heck have we got managing this government’s affairs?

Who suffers from all this runaway government wasteful spending and cover-ups, with their incompetence’s and travesties? Iraq? No! We the people and taxpayers do!

It’s always about these politicians always wanting to either tax us, or take something away from us, all to make up for their sheer incompetence’s, instead of fixing the real root of the problems, themselves and their lack of managing big government and its moneys.

These are kind of stuffs that are going to break government and its career politicians’ and their careers, rather than have them around for the good times, but messing with OUR money, it’s no you don’t and we won’t stand for it!

The bottom line; these politicians need to clean up their freakin’ spending messes first and THEIR lack of financial controls, before they go around and screw us for more TAX moneys!

Audit: US cannot account for $8.7B in Iraqi funds  A U.S. audit has found that the Pentagon cannot account for over 95 percent of $9.1 billion in Iraq reconstruction money, spotlighting Iraqi complaints that there is little to show for the massive funds pumped into their cash-strapped, war-ravaged nation.

The $8.7 billion in question was Iraqi money managed by the Pentagon, not part of the $53 billion that Congress has allocated for rebuilding. It's cash that Iraq, which relies on volatile oil revenues to fuel its spending, can ill afford to lose.

The $9.1 billion in question came from the Development Fund for Iraq, which was set up by the U.N. Security Council in 2003. The DFI includes revenues from Iraq's oil and gas exports, as well as frozen Iraqi assets and surplus funds from the defunct, Saddam Hussein-era U.N. oil-for-food program.

And now More than $5 billion in American taxpayer funds has been wasted:

A $40 million prison sits in the desert north of Baghdad, empty. A $165 million children's hospital goes unused in the south. A $100 million wastewater treatment system in Fallujah has cost three times more than projected, yet sewage still runs through the streets.

As the United States draws down in Iraq, it is leaving behind hundreds of abandoned or incomplete projects. More than $5 billion in American taxpayer funds has been wasted - more than 10 percent of the $50 billion the United States has spent on reconstruction in Iraq, according to audits from a U.S. watchdog agency.

That amount is probably an underestimate, based on an analysis of more than 300 reports by auditors with the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. And it does not take into account security costs, which have run almost 17 percent for some projects.

There are success stories. Hundreds of police stations, border forts and government buildings have been built, Iraqi security forces have improved after years of training, and a deep-water port at the southern oil hub of Umm Qasr has been restored.

But even completed projects for the most part fell far short of original goals, according to an Associated Press review of hundreds of audits and investigations and visits to several sites.

Col. Jon Christensen, who took over as commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Gulf Region District this summer, said the federal agency has completed more than 4,800 projects and is rushing to finish 233 more. Some 595 projects have been terminated, mostly for security reasons.