Allen faults Collins on Iraq contracts

BANGOR – Rep. Tom Allen got a little help Thursday from a colleague in the U.S. House of Representatives in making his case for why he should be elected to the U.S. Senate this fall.

Henry Waxman, a California Democrat who heads the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, appeared with Allen at their party’s campaign headquarters in downtown Bangor to highlight the issue of fraud, waste and abuse by government contractors in Iraq. It’s a key issue that Allen says differentiates him from the Republican incumbent he is trying to unseat, Sen. Susan Collins.

According to Allen, who has criticized Collins on the issue throughout much of the year, Collins should have held hearings on government contracting in Iraq prior to Nov. 2006, when she chaired the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. For three and a half years, he said, Collins ignored the issue, despite entreaties from her Democratic colleagues and a series of “horror stories” about how much money was being wasted.

Waxman, who since 2006 has conducted hearings on the issue in the House, joined in the criticism on Thursday. He echoed Allen’s charges that between $18 billion and $23 billion in federal money has been subject to contractor waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq.

“This is the kind of thing that Congress needed to look at,” Waxman said. “Government has got to be open and accountable.”

Among the stories about such alleged abuse are tales of contractors serving contaminated water to troops, doing shoddy electrical work that electrocuted American soldiers, burning trucks in the desert because replacement parts weren’t available, and overcharging for meals, Allen said.

“These stories go on and on,” Allen said. “It just didn’t have to be this bad.”

The Collins campaign responded Thursday, accusing Allen of misleading voters about her record. Collins fought successfully to preserve the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction when President George Bush wanted to eliminate it, campaign officials said, and she authored bipartisan legislation on the issue that the Senate passed unanimously in November 2007.

Moreover, Allen missed a March 2007 vote in the House about the same issue, according to Collins’ campaign staffers.

“Its unfortunate that Tom Allen and his friend from California are trying to mislead Maine voters with this tired old partisan attack,” Kevin Kelley, Collins’ campaign spokesman, said in a prepared statement. “It was Senator Collins who authored a contracting reform bill that passed the Senate unanimously and would significantly improve the contracting process. It’s clear that Tom Allen is just trying to hide his own record of ineffectiveness.”

In past exchanges on the same point, Allen has defended the missed vote by saying he knew the House bill, which he supported, would pass by a large margin, and that at the time of the vote he was in a classified briefing on Army readiness.

On Thursday, both Allen and Waxman acknowledged that Collins helped preserve the Special Inspector General’s office, but said she should have done more. Holding hearings on the performance of Halliburton and its subsidiary, KBR, would not have amounted to political theater because military support and preparedness is a nonpartisan issue, they said. And much of the problems likely could have been avoided if the contracts had been awarded through competitive bidding, rather than through an emergency no-bid process.

“She was AWOL as far as her job in the Senate,” Waxman said.

Allen is expected to make several campaign appearances with U.S. senators over the next few days.

This afternoon, he is expected to a make a series of appearances in Portland, Turner and South Paris with U.S. Sen. Jon Tester of Montana. On Saturday, he is scheduled to appear with U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio in Biddeford, Lewiston, Brunswick and Bangor.