The Purchase Care Waste Elimination Act of 2005 could
result in budget savings, but it’s not possible to
determine how much, “if any,” according to the Congressional
Budget Office.
It said S-457, as ordered reported by the Senate Committee
on Homeland Securityand Governmental Affairs in June,
would direct the Office of Management and Budget to issue
guidance for executive agencies on the use of purchase cards,
as well as review cardholder practices and require agencies
to submit reports assessing compliance with the new guidelines.
The bill would also require the General Services Administration
to improve efforts to get discounts with vendors when using
purchase cards, and require it to work with the Internal Revenue
Service and Financial Management Service to develop procedures
implementing the Federal Payment Levy Program for purchase card
payments.
The Government Accountability Office has estimated that the
Departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Justice,
Interior, and Transportation would get about $300 million through
10 percent discounts each year with vendors they frequently use.
However, CBO said that it “has no basis to predict whether the goals
of the legislation would be met by more negotiations with such
vendors, better guidelines for the use of purchase cards, and more
careful monitoring of their use.”
The legislation is also designed to integrate purchase cards into
the FPLP, under which the IRS can collect overdue taxes – estimated
to be several billion dollars – through levies of up to 100 percent,
according to CBO, but it added that information from FMS, OMB, and GSA
indicate collections under the bill “would likely be insignificant,” due to
“unresolved operational and privacy issues related to integrating purchase cards
into the FPLP.”
