Veterans Affairs Purchase Card Misuse Mitigation Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. BERGMAN. Mr. Speaker, government purchase cards are issued to Federal employees to make small, simple purchases. Their transaction limit was $3,500, but the fiscal year 2018 NDAA increased that limit to $10,000. This increase will cause purchase card usage to go up, thereby increasing the chance for misuse.

Purchase card transactions already total roughly $4 billion annually in the VA, and the program has been found repeatedly to lack adequate controls related to waste, fraud, and abuse.

As chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, it is my job to monitor programs involving taxpayer dollars and veterans. That is why I introduced the Veterans Affairs Purchase Card Misuse Mitigation Act. It will mitigate the potential for misuse of purchase card spending by requiring the VA Secretary to revoke a purchase card from any employee found to have knowingly misused their card or approval authority.

Currently, penalties are applied slowly, if at all, and employees are very rarely terminated for purchase card misuse or abuse. H.R. 5215 creates a safeguard to stop purchase card misuse once it begins and holds bad actors accountable for all of their actions.

Mr. Speaker, being a good steward of taxpayers' dollars is my top priority, and this bill brings accountability to the necessary but problematic purchase card structure.

Mr. Speaker, I urge support of this bill.

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