Washington, DC -- Representative Ed Markey (D-MA), a senior member of the House Homeland Security Committee, urged the committee today in a markup of the authorization bill to adopt measures preventing the fraud and abusive credit card charges by DHS employees.  According to a study released today by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), employees with government credit cards could have cost U.S. taxpayers up to $2 billion in waste or fraud.  The GAO study found that 45 percent of credit card purchases did not get any pre-purchase authorization and itemizes dozens of egregious charges from plasma screen televisions to beer brewing kits to doggie boots.  The GAO pointed out that the Department does not have rules in place for employees using government credit card and the fraud, waste, and abuse they’ve documented could have been prevented if DHS had those rules by now.

“It is appalling that during one of the most awful natural disasters to hit our country in a century, the Department of Homeland Security not only botched the emergency response to that tragedy, but also allowed gross credit card abuse to run rampant,” Markey said.  “DHS needs to give its employees who are trusted with taxpayers’ money a tutorial on waste, fraud, and abuse and must be much more vigilant in its authorization of spending and oversight of spending.”

Rep. Markey’s work on homeland security can be found at http://markey.house.gov

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 19, 2006

CONTACT: Israel Klein 202.225.2836