Should the American people expect any type of accountability from their elected representatives? A new piece from the Daily Caller revealed that the government body tasked with overseeing U.S. efforts to rebuild in Afghanistan faced insurmountable barriers from Biden administration agencies during its attempts to shed transparency over $1 billion of foreign aid.
Transparency requests sent for The Treasury Department and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) were not granted “in any capacity,” per their report. This both undermines the interest of the American people and violates a congressional mandate, according to SIGAR.
“SIGAR, for the first time in its history, is unable this quarter to provide Congress and the American people with a full accounting of this U.S. government spending due to the non-cooperation of several U.S. government agencies,” read the report. “USAID and State legal counsels’ claim that SIGAR’s jurisdiction does not include such matters is not only contrary to the law but a gross deviation from over 14 years of precedent set by three prior Administrations.”
This $1.1 billion assistance in question comes from the State Department and USAID for “food and cash support, nutrition, healthcare, protection for women and children and agricultural inputs,” said a Sept. 23 USAID statement.
“The State Department was selective in the information it provided pursuant to SIGAR’s audit and quarterly data requests, sharing high-level funding data but not details of agency-supported programs in Afghanistan,” the report alleged.
SIGAR appeared to attack the methodology of how this foreign spending is justified in a Twitter post last week.
In #Afghanistan, U.S. agencies were seldom judged by their projects’ continued utility, but by the number of projects completed and dollars spenthttps://t.co/HXzJnsbKb1
— SIGAR (@SIGARHQ) November 1, 2022
Daily Caller reached out to the Treasury Department for comment on the matter.
“Treasury has complied with all legal requirements and shared information with SIGAR,” A spokesperson from the agency told the outlet in their response.
This event does not mark the first controversy surrounding a lack of transparency on what is happening with American taxpayer money as it gets sent off to a foreign country such as Afghanistan. A report featuring Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton by Fox News almost a year ago touched on a very similar topic after the administration allegedly attempted to remove reports of Afghanistan aid.
