DOGE Deactivates Nearly Half a Million Credit Card [View all]
Source: Newsweek
Published Apr 16, 2025 at 5:55 AM EDT
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has suspended almost half a million government credit cards in use by federal officials. The task force, headed by billionaire Elon Musk, said it had deactivated cards used by more than 30 agencies as part of its crackdown on government spending.
The Context
On returning to office in January, President Donald Trump created DOGE via an executive order to reduce the size the federal workforce and cut government spending by eliminating waste and inefficiency. The task force has since recommended the firing of more than 200,000 federal workers, and 75,000 workers have accepted the Trump administration's offer to voluntarily resign.
What To Know
On Tuesday, DOGE wrote on X, formerly Twitter—the social media platform Musk owns—that it had deactivated about 470,000 credit cards in its crackdown on federal spending.
"Credit Card Update! The program to audit unused/unneeded credit cards has been expanded to 30 agencies. After 7 weeks, ~470k cards have been de-activated. As a reminder, at the start of the audit, there were ~4.6M active cards/accounts, so still more work to do," the post said.
Read more: https://www.newsweek.com/doge-credit-card-deactivation-2060270
So what is the time interval to determine if a card is "unused"? If you have staff who periodically (but not frequently) go on road trips as part of their jobs overseeing regulated industry, then the frequency of travel needs to be taken into consideration as it might not be "continuous enough", based on their unspoken criteria, to justify having a card
Might as well go back to the era of the "cash advance" like I always had before they eventually brought in government credit cards (the first of which back in the day in my agency, was the barely-accepted anywhere "Diner's Club"
)
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