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A press conference on Oct. 16 highlighted another bicameral effort being waged in the long battle to combat waste and fraud within the federal government. Leading the reform charge once again was Sen. Charles Grassley. He was joined by Reps. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) in announcing a new measure to crack down on the millions of dollars lost to fraud each year through improper use of government-issued credit cards. According to Wilson, there were more than 2.5 million federal credit-card holders with purchases totaling more than $21 billion in 2002.

"When we started looking into the abuse of government-issued credit cards nearly four years ago [at the Defense Department], we leaped in head first not knowing what we'd find," Grassley said. With the assistance of the General Accounting Office and agency inspectors general, Grassley added, investigators have "uncovered problems in the travel-card and purchase-card programs of many agencies," mainly as a result of weak internal controls.

Although most businesses would view abuse of company credit cards as reason to terminate employees, such punishment is not as simple when it comes to government employees. In seeking to address the weakness of internal oversight the bill would require agencies to formulate a set of penalties for abuses, conduct annual audits, hold classes on proper use of the credit cards and run credit checks before issuing cards to employees.

The legislators conceded, however, that one of the difficulties in increasing oversight is that auditors are outnumbered vastly by holders of the purchase cards, many of whom are as creative as they are brazen. In addition to well-known abuses at the Defense Department, an internal audit found that in a six-month period 300 employees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture racked up $7.7 million in personal charges, including purchasing tattoos and lingerie and paying tuition at bartender school.

Wilson said efforts in Congress would complement rather than duplicate a best-practices manual for credit-card usage being finalized by the General Services Administration.

Act Looks Out for Whistle-Blowers

Rep. Todd Platts (R-Pa.) formally introduced legislation aimed at strengthening protections for government employees who disclose cases of waste, fraud or abuse. The Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (HR 3281) is a companion bill to the Federal Employee Protection of Disclosures Act (S 1358) introduced in the Senate in June by Sens. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa). The Senate measure is awaiting action by the Senate Governmental Affairs subcommittee on Financial Management, the Budget and International Security.

Platts' legislation is in part a response to a string of decisions issued by the Federal Circuit Court that have resulted in an erosion of safeguards contained in the earlier Whistleblower Protection Act (WPA). The Federal Circuit Court was given sole authority to review cases under the WPA, but the new bill would rescind for five years this unique purview over WPA cases.

In recent decisions the court has ruled that the WPA does not cover employees if they have directed their criticism to a coworker rather than to someone in a position to take corrective action, or if they disclosed information previously made public by another whistle-blower.

To remedy some of the court-created loopholes, the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act would clarify that any disclosure of information is protected "without restriction to time, place, form, motive, context or prior disclosure made to any person by an employee or applicant, including a disclosure made in the ordinary course of an employee's duties."

A Sexually Arousing Appropriations Bill

Several members of Congress have expressed outrage at the appropriation of taxpayer dollars for the creation of a postal-code system in Iraq. And constituents are asking what monies that are to be spent in Iraq could be better used on important domestic needs. Well, a group of House members, known as Washington Waste Watchers, points to several examples of how domestic funds could be spent better.

During the July 10 debate on the fiscal year 2004 Labor/Health and Human Services/Education appropriations bill, Rep. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) offered an amendment to prohibit the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from funding a unique research project. The amendment was defeated 212-210 and the funding remained in the spending hopper. The vital research? A two-year grant of $237,038 to study "mood arousal and sexual risk taking."

According to the original grant application, as part of the study individual subjects would be paid $50 to view pornographic film clips before consuming alcohol and, after they had reached levels of inebriation, their "responses" again would be recorded.

The NIH also awarded $147,000 to Northwestern University for a grant entitled "Is Female Sexual Arousal Target Specific?" When Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) raised questions of propriety, Duane Alexander, director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, responded in a letter that the NIH had determined the research would "answer questions regarding women's health that had before only been answered for men, and would provide important insights pertaining to infertility and the prevention of HIV/AIDS and other infections."

Those "insights" then were published in a paper titled Sex Difference in Sexual Arousal.

Jennifer G. Hickey is a writer for Insight.

Copyright (c) 2006
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