Rumsfeld Wants To Cut “Red Tape”

May 14, 2003 18:47 · 140 words · 1 minute read

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has asked Congress to cut the red tape so that he can be “freed from archaic rules and regulations”.

Rumsfeld submitted a proposal to Congress on April 11 that would scrap virtually every reporting requirement intended to let lawmakers oversee major defense spending programs.

This comes from a government in which the Vice President has secret meetings to create energy policy and has to be taken to court to get information! A government that reportedly gave a Halliburton subsidiary a deal for work in Iraq, without sending it out to bid (while Cheney continues to receive $1M payments from Halliburton).

I don’t think I would trust the Clinton administration to have run without oversight and accountability to provide information. I definitely do not believe that this administration has earned the trust to be free of accountability.