Calling for accountability from Bush

According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, six out of ten Americans don’t support… According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, six out of ten Americans don’t support President George W. Bush’s request for $87 billion to continue rebuilding Iraq.

Rightly so.

The American people deserve to know what’s behind this enormous number – a number representing their money. Setting any political ideology aside, it’s simply poor business practice to requisition funds without itemizing what is needed. No CEO would go to her board members without invoices and specific costs for specific items – not if she expected to be approved.

Perhaps the amount is justified – but how would we know? No one is providing any answers, and the lack of transparency – hiding behind the limp generality of “security reasons” – is despicable.

In every high school civics class, students learn that the fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals is how much of the taxpayers’ money the government should spend, and how. Liberals, we were told, want to spend lots of money on social programs and benefit the populace that way. Conservatives, the teaching went, want to streamline government and let citizens keep more of their own money to spend as they see fit. Liberals want more government; conservatives, less.

Yet, in these Republican-dominated times, our government wants to make a massive grab for our money – in a time when the domestic financial picture is utterly bleak – without explaining where they want to spend it. The Department of Homeland Security was the first new federal department created since the Department of Defense at the end of World War II – not exactly a streamlining move.

Questioning the amount, or suggesting the denial of the request in today’s paranoid political climate is sure to draw immature cries of “Terrorist!” Bush will get his money, and some financial experts are suggesting that the amount will grow and grow.

Regardless of how any citizen saw the war – as a necessary hardship or an inexcusable waste of life – it happened. Now, we have a responsibility to rebuild Iraq or it will descend further into anarchy. However, our president has a responsibility to us, the taxpayers, to explain how he arrived at the figure he did, and what, exactly, his plan is.