WASHINGTON, Aug. 6 (UPI) -- Iraq has produced a new embarrassment for President George W. Bush: It has been sitting on almost $80 billion in cash, not spending it at a time when U.S. taxpayers have pumped nearly $50 billion into the country.

As the late, great Sen. Everett Dirksen was alleged to have said -- though no one can prove he ever actually said it, "A billion dollars here and a billion dollars there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money."

The Government Accountability Office, the respected and incorruptible arm of the U.S. Congress, published a report this week revealing that the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was sitting on an unexpectedly large multibillion-dollar surplus from its own revenues that had been boosted by the profits from oil experts at a time when global oil prices are still way above $100 a barrel.

The GAO concluded the nest egg Baghdad was hatching could amount to as much as $79 billion by the end of this year. In a report, the agency noted Iraq had already built up a budgetary surplus of $29 billion in the three years from 2005 to 2007, even while the Shiite-Sunni civil war was raging at full intensity through 2006. This year Baghdad's government surplus was expected to reach as much as $50 billion, in addition to the $29 billion it had already piled up, the GAO said.

This news has infuriated the Democrats who control both houses of Congress. "It is inexcusable for U.S. taxpayers to continue to foot the bill for projects the Iraqis are fully capable of funding themselves," Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement Wednesday.