While estimates vary, we are now rapidly approaching a significant milestone in Iraq: $200 billion spent supporting the war. Massive outlays are common in wartime, but to successfully prosecute any war the public has to have faith that the money is being spent wisely and appropriately. Just as importantly, American men and women in uniform have to trust that the government is doing everything it can to win the peace for which they are fighting.

Historic levels of secrecy surrounding the contracting process coupled with the high risk of waste require an elevated degree of congressional oversight. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) introduced a resolution this week that would do just that — establish a Senate panel modeled after the famed Truman Committee to review government contracts for work in Iraq.

The time is right for a new investigative wartime commission. Accounting errors and procedural flaws have already led to finger pointing on all sides. Existing auditing agencies and Congressional committees don't appear to be up to the task of a methodical, intensive study of wartime spending. The increasing complexity of the contracting process and the sheer enormity of the war effort require a specialized commission to provide adequate oversight for federal funds.

Accompanying the war on terror and its associated military operations has been a rapid expansion of government responsibility for overseeing all the gears and cogs of the commercial machinery in the war effort. Oversight is stretched thinly across different agencies and committees, dramatically increasing the risk of waste in the contracting process. The blurring of public and private interests has led some former military officials to describe the contracting process as a “patronage system.”

To solve the problems posed by the fragmented control of wartime expenditures and the unusual emergency appropriations process, there is a growing need for a central entity, like the one proposed by Senators Durbin and Craig, that can provide oversight for every step of the process and use what it learns to directly influence legislation. A bipartisan committee of congressional lawmakers with the power to subpoena the appropriate parties and conduct far-ranging investigations into the nature of the contracting process will perform an important public service to American taxpayers in this time of huge government expenditures. The simple existence of a special oversight committee will send a message to all private contractors that someone is watching and they will be held accountable.

Special commissions have long been employed to monitor the massive outlays of public money that inevitably accompany the run up to and the aftermath of a war. The Truman Committee is both the most famous and the most successful; having held hundreds of hearings and conducted exhaustive investigative missions that laid bare the machinations of America's military industrial complex and saved taxpayers billions of dollars. The savings generated are staggering compared to the cost of setting up and running the committee: the Truman Committee was launched with just $15,000, but may have saved in excess of $15 billion.

In fact, similar committees have been created during nearly every major American war or weapons buildup, including the Civil War, and both World Wars. The result of most of these committees has been a leaner, more efficient partnership between the military and their private contracting partners.

The Truman Committee has been characterized as the most successful investigative effort in the history of the United States. It played an important public education role during World War II. Its responsible, commonsense approach to investigation made it one of the most successful investigative committees in the history of the Senate. The bipartisan efforts of Senators Durbin and Craig are a great first step toward the direction the Truman committee took our nation more than five decades ago.