By Aliza Marcus
The U.S. should stop paying for reconstruction projects in Iraq because the Baghdad government can fund the rebuilding from its sales of crude oil, two U.S. senators said.
Proposed legislation in the Senate would stop the U.S. from using any more taxpayer money to fund reconstruction projects in Iraq, Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a Michigan Democrat, said today on CNN's ``Late Edition'' program.
``It is an outrage. It is absolutely offensive that American taxpayers who are paying $130 a barrel for Iraqi oil, $4 a gallon at the pump for Iraqi gasoline, are also spending taxpayers' dollars to reconstruct Iraq,'' Levin said.
U.S. agencies spent $23.2 billion on security, oil, electricity generation and water projects since the ouster of the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and his regime in 2003, according to an Aug. 5 report by Congress's investigative agency, the Government Accountability Office. The Iraqi government spent $3.9 billion on those needs in the past three years, the report said.
``We need to put a limitation on the use of building -- rebuilding of infrastructure in Iraq using American taxpayer funds,'' Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said on the show.
President George W. Bush also should demand that Iraq reimburse the U.S. for continuing reconstruction costs, Levin said. ``We're spending money to build hotels in the economic reconstruction zone at the Baghdad Airport. Those hotels will be owned by the Iraqi government. It is an outrage. It should end.''
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=ans3XHizFktA&refer=home
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