Sen. Claire McCaskill holds a hearing today on waste, fraud and abuse allegations in private security contracts at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. She will do this as chairwoman of the Senate Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight.

But that is not the only thing the Missouri Democrat has in the works as Wednesday dawns in the nation's capital. Also making the rounds is the interim report of the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, a newly released document that shows billions of American dollars being spent with minimal oversight.

The 121-page report, called "At What Cost?: Contingency Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan," speaks to controls over the $830 billion spent by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan and to the 240,000 contractor employees at work in those nations. Those contract workers, 80 percent of whom are foreign nations, perform jobs like running dining halls, washing uniforms, guarding diplomats and building infrastructure.

Ms. McCaskill proved a driving force in passing legislation that created the contracting commission last year. The group's final report will come out next year, and this week's document provides some preliminary findings.

Among other things, the report points repeatedly to inadequate oversight by federal authorities. Lack of competitive bidding, inefficiencies among contractors and poor documentation of work also made the two war zones ripe for the wasting of tax dollars, the commission said.

"The Department of Defense has failed to provide enough staff to perform adequate contract oversight," a part of the report reads.

In the U.S. House, the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs will hold a hearing today on the commission's interim report.

Ms. McCaskill, the former Missouri auditor, has positioned herself as the Senate watchdog for contracting abuse. (A Missourian who preceded her in that Senate seat, Harry Truman, did much the same work during World War II.) Her visibility will rise this week as the stories circulate about the waste, fraud and abuse that cost Americans billions of dollars in far-off nations.