This week the House passed a bill to authorize another $90 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as rebuilding the Gulf Coast. While we hear about more and more money going towards the military, we really need to know exactly what it is being spent on once there. This article tells us what it isn’t being spent on:
It’s stranger than fiction, a tale bizarre beyond belief: The Army that helped conquer Iraq in three weeks doesn’t have enough cash to keep the lights on at Fort Sam Houston.
The post is in crisis mode, not dark but deep in the red.
Its garrison office, which provides services to more than 70 tenant commands, has frozen hiring, shut off cell phones and BlackBerry devices, turned in leased cars and forbidden troops from using government credit cards. If a computer breaks down, the tenant command has to pay for the part.
The post’s $1.4 million-a-month CPS Energy bill is due June 30.
“I don’t have the money to pay that bill right now, but I believe the Army will assist us,” said Col. Wendy Martinson, Fort Sam’s garrison commander.
Fort Sam is grappling with a $26 million budget shortfall partly because of congressional wrangling over a measure to fund wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But problems at Fort Sam and many of the Army’s 179 posts worldwide won’t be over even if Congress approves a $94.5 billion supplemental appropriations bill next week as expected.
So under the command of George Bush, the United States Army, which is the biggest army in the world funded by the richest nation in the world, can not even pay the bills. This is utterly amazing and really makes one wonder what the hell is going on in Washington.