In the wake of U.S. troops officially leaving Iraq and as control over national infrastructure is being handed over to the Iraqi government, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said Tuesday that the way U.S. assets remaining in the country are being treated is “troublesome.”
“The degree in which our assets are being treated in very troublesome” Chaffetz said on CNN’s "Situation Room" with Wolf Blitzer. Chaffetz continued, “There’s some 50 billion dollars worth of projects that the American taxpayers have footed ... yet when we try to go through checkpoints and try to travel through the country and do other types of things we’re having a very difficult time.”
Chaffetz said that it is not only projects begun while U.S. troops remained in the country in large numbers, but current projects administered by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
“Why should we be pouring more than a quarter of a billion dollars into USAID projects when our own USAID people can’t even go out to see what they’re helping to build?”
Chaffetz, who chairs a subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense and Foreign Operations, said that he opposes continued funding of more than one billion dollars a year to Iraq as it sees budget surpluses from oil exports.
