Based on expenses figured here , which doesn’t include a lot of costs so it’s a generous estimate, Republicans have spent $5,027,517.23 (at the time of this writing) and counting on the Select Committee on Benghazi.
This from the party that denied funds requested by the Obama administration for world wide security of our diplomatic corps overseas.
Flashback to the Benghazi “investigation” going on three long years ago, in November of 2012, when Republicans were using it to hit President Obama (always a political purpose to these “investigations” on your tax dollars):
Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) exploded, “The stench of hypocrisy that hangs over this city today emanates from this room. I’ve listened to my colleagues talk about the President of the United States and others in the administration using [the] terms ‘deliberate’, ‘lies’, ‘unmitigated gall’, ‘malfeasance,’ which is malicious and knowing evil-doing, ‘disgust’, ‘coverups’. If you want to know who is responsible in this town, buy yourself a mirror!”
Ackerman accused Republicans of having (as reported by NBC at the time):
“the audacity” to hold the Benghazi hearings when the administration requested for worldwide security “$440 million more than you guys wanted to provide. And the answer is that you damn didn’t provide it! You REDUCED what the administration asked for to protect these people. Ask not who the guilty party is, it’s you! It is us. It is this committee, and the things that we insist that we need have to cost money.”
He added, “Could you tell me which of my colleagues on this committee was as bodacious in their insistence that we provide more money for American security in the State Department budget. I would appreciate it.”
Ackerman then asked them to raise their hands and gave them a count of five to do so. None did.
So, according to Republicans we have no money for actual security, but we have over $5 million and counting of money to spend to made ads for Republican candidates and to try to dig up dirt on presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Just how bad are things? Benghazi Committee Democrats point out that this dollar figure does not include a lot of costs:
This calculation does not include the costs of: the independent Accountability Review Board; the eight previous reports by seven Congressional committees; the time, money, and resources consumed by federal agencies to comply with Select Committee requests; or the opportunity cost of not spending this money elsewhere, like improving security for our diplomatic officers abroad.
This sham has been going on 553 Days. Longer than the Watergate investigation. And the Democrats point out, “longer than the investigations of Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy assassination, Iran-Contra and Hurricane Katrina.”
And yet the Republicans’ Benghazi conspiracy theories have been debunked already, many times, sometimes by members of their own party.
It’s time for House Republicans to pay the American taxpayer back for the $5 million dollars and counting that they have wasted on the Benghazi investigation.
You can make your voice heard by signing the petition demanding that House Republicans pay back the $5 million they have spent on their Benghazi Select Committee.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Connect with Sarah on Post, Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.
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