Benghazi panel may cost $1.5 million this year
The House is on track to spend around $1.5 million this year on the Republican-created special committee to further investigate the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, according to congressional spending reports.
While the year-end total is a moving target, committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., promises it will be less than the $3.3 million GOP leaders budgeted for it.
The committee, Republican leaders say, is needed to combine the other congressional investigations of the terror attack and tell the true story of what happened on Sept. 11, 2012. Four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed in the attack.
Democrats call the committee a waste of time and money. No questions about the attack are left to answer, they say, particularly after a new House Intelligence Committee report found no wrongdoing by government agencies.
USA TODAY reported in July that Republicans had budgeted up to $3.3 million for the Benghazi committee this year after GOP leaders pushed a resolution through the House in May to create the committee.
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"We'll come in under budget but I can't tell you by how much. We will not exceed our budget, I can tell you that," Gowdy said Tuesday.
The committee spent about $900,000 through the end of October, according to a report Gowdy filed Nov. 18 with the House Administration Committee. Salaries for the committee's 25 staff members — plus one intern and one staffer shared with another office — cost about $250,000 per month, meaning the total committee spending for the year is likely to exceed $1.5 million.
That $250,000 monthly payroll would cost $3 million if that staffing level is maintained for an entire year.
The committee's spending includes "Republicans and Democrats on the committee," spokesman Jamal Ware said, "and supports the committee's investigatory activities and associated costs." According to the report, nine of the staff are Democrats.
By comparison, the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, one of the House's smallest, spends about $211,000 a month on salaries for 28 staff and is on pace to spend about $2.8 million on its operations this year
From July through September, the VA committee held 10 hearings — three of which were field hearings during the August recess. The Benghazi committee has thus far held one public hearing.
Democrats, including Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, say the House Intelligence Committee report released last month has already covered the ground that Gowdy's panel intends to investigate. The bipartisan Intelligence report concluded that there were no intelligence failures that led to the attack and no order from Washington preventing rescuers from arriving at the compound.
The report also said that while initial White House statements on the attack — which suggested it grew out of an organic protest, not a planned terror attack — "were not fully accurate," they were based on "contradictory and conflicting intelligence" being provided from the field.
"There is no reason for the Benghazi Select Committee to reinvestigate these facts, repeat the work already done by our Republican and Democratic colleagues and squander millions of additional taxpayer dollars in the process," Cummings said.
Contributing: Mary Troyan