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Cost of Benghazi Probe No Surprise

The Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attacks that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya needed to be investigated. No question about that. Roles played by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama’s administration needed to be explored.

As Clinton tried hard to shove the issue into the backs of voters’ minds, she insisted it revealed nothing new. Oh, but it did.

Part of what committee members learned was that Clinton had maintained a private email server, in violation of federal law. That might never have come out had the Benghazi investigation not been launched.

But one of the most striking things about the probe by a special House of Representatives committee was the cost: $7 million. That works out to $8,750 for each of the 800 pages in the committee’s official report.

No wonder the country has a national debt of more than $19 trillion.

With the tens of thousands of lawyers and investigators on the government’s payroll (more than 97,000 attorneys, by one estimate),  one might have thought the investigation could have been conducted at less cost.

That ignores the reality of Washington, of course. Spending money is what the bureaucrats do. Clearly, they do it very well.

Meanwhile, what they expect us to do well is to keep up with their ever-increasing demands for more, more, more of our money. That, too, is a scandal — but don’t expect anyone in Washington to investigate it.

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