Posted on 03/13/2002 9:40:57 AM PST by Jean S
WASHINGTON --
A Navy employee investigated for charging nearly $12,000 in personal expenses on her government credit card has been promoted to a key Army financial management office at the Pentagon and placed in charge of "cash integration," a senator said Wednesday.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, told a House panel that the employee, Tanya Mays, was never disciplined and has never been asked to repay the government for any of the purchases, which included a computer, a kitchen appliance, clothing and groceries.
"When you put one of these cases under the microscope," Grassley said, "it seems like the whole problem comes into much sharper focus,"
Attempts to reach Mays for comment through the Army press office were not immediately successful.
Grassley testified before the House Government Reform subcommittee on government efficiency, financial management and intergovernmental relations. The panel, in conjunction with the General Accounting Office and Grassley, has been investigating credit card abuses by the 1.7 million Pentagon employees who have government charge cards.
More than 46,000 Defense Department employees had defaulted on $623 million in official travel expenses charged to the government cards as of last November, Grassley said. The bad debts, which banks that issue the cards have been forced to write off, are growing at the rate of $1 million a month.
Rep. Stephen Horn, R-Calif., chairman of the subcommittee, and Grassley said they intend to ask Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to determine what action should be taken against 713 commissioned officers who have defaulted on $1.1 million in charges on their government-issued travel cards.
"Somebody over in the Pentagon needs to come down hard on the officer scofflaws," said Grassley, who provided the panel with a confidential list of the 713 officers. "Credit card abuse in the military will never stop until the officers clean up their act."
Grassley said the accounts of the 713 officers have been unpaid for seven months or more and include individual balances of up to $8,000. He said the officers range from junior lieutenants to senior colonels and a Navy captain.
Evidence of unauthorized personal purchases by Mays was uncovered last summer by GAO investigators auditing the Navy Publics Works Department in San Diego. The case was referred to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, but an assistant U.S. attorney in San Diego declined to prosecute.
Mays was promoted to the Army job at the Pentagon in October.
Its my understanding that Bank of America is about to throw out our contract (USNR) because of people like this.
There is absolutely no resolve to cut one cent of government waste. These people know that there is absolutely no effort to root it out because their bosses are stealing 100 times as much and they have the goods on them.
Let's try to understand something here. Before I retired, my company gave me a credit card to use for travel. After making a charge, I had to submit an expense report to the company, they paid me and I in turn paid the credit card company.
Is that the process used here? (Some DOD employee please help). If this is the case, are these people submitting expense reports to DOD and are they getting reimbursed by the DOD? And are they then refusing to pay the credit card company? If that is the case, will someone tell me why in the hell they still have a job? And why they are not being prosecuted for fraud?
Go get 'em, Chuck!
Oh and, when you get a minute, please tell me how that socialist Farm Bill of yours is Constitutional. You're one of the most conservative senators in D.C., except that you and Senator Tom "Left-of-Kennedy" Harkin (or, "Dungheap" to his friends) always seem to get real cozy when it's farm bill time.
Most companys and the government went to the cards that billed the employee rather than the company because "beancounters" felt this method would make the company money.
I beleive that if the company or the government were billed directly there would be no defaults.
I worked for your competitor - Westinghouse.
I believe that if the company or the government were billed directly there would be no defaults.
Probably not but then would you expect some DOD beancounter to flag Ms. Mays $12,000 shopping spree and make her pay or would they just pay the bill and forget about it?
But then, I suppose that approach makes too much sense for government use.
She can't handel her own bookkeeping, she should be perfect for handeling Government money.
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