Kudos to U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill for introducing legislation that would strip funding for large-scale construction projects in Afghanistan from the Defense Department budget and transfer the funds and authorization to spend them in 2012 to the Department of Transportation for programming. Since 2004, the Defense Department has spent more than $6.9 billion in Iraq and Afghanistan; its funding comes from two sources, the Commanders’ Emergency Response Program (CERP) and the Afghanistan Infrastructure Fund (AIF). The Missouri Democrat, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight, aims to put strict limits on Defense’s CERP and AIF spending on what she terms “unsustainable infrastructure projects” in Afghanistan and redirect $800 million to domestic infrastructure projects — to begin the rebuilding of America’s highways, roads and bridges, putting construction workers back on the job and getting the U.S. supply chain moving again.

Said McCaskill upon offering her legislation, “I support the mission in Afghanistan — but after years of work on wartime contracting issues, and looking at the way we have spent money through contracting in both Iraq and Afghanistan, I have come to a stark and real conclusion about money that we have wasted and continue to waste in this effort; we are building infrastructure in Afghanistan that we cannot secure and that will not be sustained. I can’t stand by as we spend billions on roads, electrical grids, bridges in Afghanistan, knowing the incredible need we have in this country for exactly that kind of investment. These projects are not being built in a secure environment. We’re paying off people to try to keep the contractors safe. And it has been documented that some of that money has gone right into the hands of our enemies.”