Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), the head of the House Armed Services Committee, said Saturday that the growing calls for more oversight of the billions of dollars the US is spending on Ukraine are “part of Russian propaganda.”
While the majority of Republicans strongly favor continuing to arm Ukraine, even the more hawkish GOP members have said they favor increased oversight for the aid. Smith said that the concern from Republicans for more transparency “makes me a little crazy.”
“Ukraine is spending the money really well; that’s why they’re winning,” Smith said at the Reagan National Defense Forum, according to Defense News. “Yes, we need oversight, but we don’t need that as an excuse to not fund what we’re doing.”
Last month, a small group of House Republicans opposed to arming Ukraine led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) introduced a bill that would require an audit of the funds that the US has spent on the war so far. Greene said that if she needed to, she would reintroduce the legislation after the next Congress is sworn in this January.
The White House is looking for Congress to approve $37.7 billion in new Ukraine aid during the lame-duck period. If authorized, the new funds will bring total US spending on a proxy war on Russia’s border to about $105 billion.
You A-HOLES ALWAYS have money for war!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
How about Humanitarian causes?………………………………………………….
How about Human Rights issues?…………………………………………………..
How does it benefit them? Do they get kickbacks? Camping contributions? Share options and c level jobs after leaving office?
I want some bloody oversight! You are funding the flipping WAR MACHINE, you ruddy bast—-!
I was a Smith ONCE, now I’m a FLIPPING VOLATILE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“Lame Ducks” my A–! Lame Dicks is more like it!
When this kind of money is involved somebody, somewhere better have some damn oversight. Proxy this and proxy that, kiss my backside. $105 flipping billion bucks?! There are not enough verbs in my vocabulary to express my flipping feelings!!!
Rep. Adam Smith come over to my house and hear my rhetoric! It’s full of four letter words and most of them start with “F”………………………!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh lord, who is this misbegotten shlub brain? WA senator. OK, he worked as prosecutor/pro tem judge for a whopping two plus years — and has been a political creature ever since (that is, 42 years). Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, from Seattle, representing Seattle, home of Boeing, is it any surprise he is pro spending $$$$$ on military items? Accountability? Naw. We don’t need that. We just BELIEVE what we are told all that $$$$ is going to the right place, no detours to all those enticing outreached fingers and hands for graft, deals, so on. Everything is just A-OK in Seattle. Oh, dear, I think Boeing is leaving….
In the Great Tradition. We don’t know about Elvis, but Scoop Jackson lives.
Really comes down to corrupt vs. shrub brain. Likely most of the former with a touch of the latter.
$105 BILLION is most likely conservative, after all they lie to us the moment their lips move. And these oligarchs living it up in Monaco need money to live on and lots of it.
The Duran is reporting Ukranian forces being decimated around Bakhmut, a strategic rail hub. The ground is full of thousands of corpses and Ukranian forces are surrounded or nearly surrounded in the area.
Ukraine is “winning” by spending their soldiers’ lives like water and using our money and weapons like the same liquid substance.
Neither of these are sustainable for them or us and both are also temporary for the additional reason that Russia seems to be getting a bit more serious with their war staffing.
But all that aside, is the congressman from Boeing actually taking a position against knowing what our money and weapons are being spent on? He’s genuinely calling this Russian propaganda?
So it goes.
“Ukraine is spending the money really well; that’s why they’re winning,”
Ukraine is winning? ha haha ahaha ahahah!
We provide the guns. They provide the bodies…. lots and lots of bodies. This can’t go on forever.
Look inside the pockets of those Armed Services Committee members, and you’ll find Ketchup stains from a Raytheon lobbyist trying to stuff their pocket with a fist full of dollars.
Calling for oversight is “Russian propaganda”? How on earth could that be construed as propaganda? Shouldn’t that be a concern with every transaction involving billions of dollars’ worth of taxpayer’s money being sent to a foreign country? If you want an example of propaganda , here is a doozie: “Ukraine is spending the money really well; that’s why they’re winning,”
“Thats why they are winning” Of course they are winning, if you believe that having 20% of your land occupied is the winning position. If you read the the Washington Post or I suppose if you are tuned into Radio free Europe, or think losing 100,000 officers is a win, and Perhaps it is a win to have no Navy, or Air Force…. Wow, it seems there must be no way the Russians can possibly win against any such posative reviews
& analysis of all things Ukrainian in this war… When pigs can fly and tell a lie and truth is just a thought from getting high, the worm will turn and burn your dreams like light burns dark and all such utter snark….
Russia has surrounded or nearly surrounded several thousand Ukraine soldiers near the strategic rail hub of Bakhmut. Thousands of Ukraine dead are lying in the fields and forests in the region killed by Russian artillery as reported at the Duran. Western media has completely ignored the fighting in this region.
“Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), the head of the House Armed Services Committee,
said Saturday that the growing calls for more oversight of the billions
of dollars the US is spending on Ukraine”
Of course, just send plane loads of cash until the dollar is worthless.
People with something to hide are very good at coming up with reasons to withhold information. The true motivation behind this kind of behavior is typically that when the truth sees the light of day, responsible people are more likely to put things right.
BTW. Check out another article featured by Antiwar.com today: Nigerian President Says Weapons From Ukraine are Winding Up in Africa
The all-purpose McCarthyite smear.
“Russian propaganda” is the LAST thing this call for “oversight” could be! Is this “representative” serious? The Russians are propagandizing so they can face the prospects of a long-drawn-out war? And why is Russia always the culprit when it comes to “propaganda and collusion”? The “reporting” that Russia’s enemies do about this war is 180 degrees from the truth. Shame on this dirt-bag Democrat for wanting to strip Americans’ rights to government accountability!
“Smith said that the concern from Republicans for more transparency ‘makes me a little crazy'”…
…’An shucks, no tellin’ what a wee crazy feller might do, ‘f he’s pushed too far,’ Smith added, edging back his jacket to stroke the handle of his conceal-n’-carry Glock 42 with the twitchy fingers of one hand.”
Adam Smith, wonderfully serendipitous name, is an Orwellian master.
I don’t understand. Why is it serendipitous? was the scottish economist adam smith pro-war or something?
Doctor Angelicus of Capitalist Theology and fountainhead of the nightmare of living industrial history, his doctrine of salvation through greed, reversing the 1700 yr tradition of Xtian teaching, unleashed upon the modern era the domination of the lowest types, self-assured in the grossest predation and pillage, destroying all that opposed it’s privileged right to exploit markets and resources the whole world over.
Time to re-read Adam Smith. It is cery convenient to dump upon him all the ills of mocern era lillaging of anything of value to prop up the paper money god,
Adam Smith was only stating the obvious -/ we engage in economic activity for a gain.
But he had much to say about greed. He in fact puts social interests above private gred. And he lived in an era when such excesses of “credit” creation, where ever since Napoleonic wars nations tried to use wars to rearrange debt by emerging victorious and imposig payment schemas on losers.
World War One was a rude awakening — nothing was solved. high debts remained and could not be wiped out. WWII was a continuation of tge same, and the endebted Europe became an easy pray to the new emerging power with plenty of resources and with clean debt slate.
But the new power simply continued the European prescription- get everyone in debt as it lioked like there was thecwhole globe to exploit. There was still a small matter of non-complying, Soviet Union and China, But with the whole globe trading within Brettton Woods, eventually Soviet Union was gone, but before them China made a plan to develop cutting a deal with Nixon.
But as the credit creatiin system continued unabated — and neither Russia nor China quite complying with forking iver theiir goodies, or allowing financial “innovation”, it all hit a fan in 2008. But China saved the day pulling globe out of depression, when G-20 was born.
Now, China is in no hurry. We can blame their COVID policies for not exactly killing themselves to pull global finances out if funk. What comes next? Who knows. But the international credit creation gig is over, Today. European countries cannot sell their debt even with high interest rate. Us beat them by jumping ahead — but it is a war among allies. Now the famous IRA (Inflation reduction act) will bring European industry to US. while helping them a tad — cutting off cheap energy from the neighborhood. Simple.
Ys, Adam Smith tries to have it both ways rhetorically; but his ascendant thesis is individual gain; egoistical greed is the key to the wealth of nations. The ethical mitigation for communal values, bourgeois liberal reformism, has ever been the confidence game played on the working class. The Brits did somewhat mitigate the harshness of the “Oliver Twists”, but the Indians made up for it.
Is Ukraine winning? That is the question. Besides that, why not audit where the money is going? And at the same time complete an audit of the Pentagon.
Looks like The Stupid is crawling all over the democratic party.
“Ukraine is spending the money really well; that’s why they’re winning,” HAHAHA!
I suppose it is ok since the USA never worries about cost overruns or waste, since it always wins all its wars and the USA is full of good infrastructure, healthy well educated and well-fed peaceful people and the USA has no enemies.
No, doozy, they are legitimate Congressional authority.
No one ever said you have to be smart to run for office. DC is oozing with exemplars.
Gee, this means a lot coming from a CCP puppet.
What hath God wrought……The ignorance and criminality displayed by our elected officials.
Actually, as american taxpayers who are footing the bill, its sorta our right TO KNOW…And since you are simply our [american taxpayer] employee you are ordered to find the f^^^ out!