Congressman Dennis Cardoza
18th Congressional District of California

"The supplement request you recently submitted makes it clear that [Iraq] costs will be much greater than was anticipated when the budget was approved," the Coalition members wrote in the letter. "We have a responsibility to reevaluate our budgetary priorities to reflect that reality so that these additional expenses are not simply added to the national debt."

"Recent reports have indicated that many of the items in the reconstruction package are not related to war reconstruction or have extremely inflated costs. Our constituents deserve to know that their tax dollars are being used in the most effective manner possible."

In a second letter to the White House, Cardoza expressed concern over some of the $20.3 billion earmarked for non-military provisions the Administration’s Iraq spending proposal. He is particularly alarmed by certain infrastructure expenditures, including $100 million allocated for the witness protection program, $400 million for two new prisons, $100 million for garbage trucks, and $19 million for building a wireless postal Internet system.

Although Cardoza understands the need to rebuild basic infrastructure in Iraq, he believes that some of the money should be dedicated to domestic law-enforcement and homeland security needs in the United States. He favors spending $1 billion of the $20.3 billion non-military proposal on local law enforcement agencies, which remain grossly under-funded throughout the nation.