Important Takeaways:

• The order implements the Department of Government Efficiency’s “Cost Efficiency Initiative,” which aims to ensure that “government spending is transparent and government employees are accountable to the American public.”
• The pause of credit card usage comes a week after DOGE discovered nearly $40 billion in spending last year linked to government-issued plastic.
• “To the maximum extent permitted by law, all credit cards held by agency employees shall be treated as frozen for 30 days from the date of this order,” reads the section on credit cards.
• The order includes exceptions for “any credit cards held by employees engaged in, or charges related to employees utilizing such credit cards for, disaster relief or natural disaster response benefits or operations or other critical services” as determined by the agency heads in consultation with DOGE.
• The cost-cutting program, led by billionaire Elon Musk, has pledged to “simplify” the federal government’s credit card program, which is managed by the General Services Administration (GSA).
• The US government currently has about 4.6 million active credit cards or credit card accounts on file – more than the total number of federal workers (about 3 million), not including government contractors and active-duty military personnel.
• Around 90 million unique transactions were made on the cards in fiscal year 2024, running up about $40 billion in bills for the federal government…
• For decades, the federal government has been plagued with scandals involving the use of taxpayer-funded credit cards.
• Over the years, government watchdogs have found everything from adult entertainment to Lego toys to lavish, multi-course meals being charged to taxpayers.
• Trump’s executive order also directs federal agencies to work with DOGE to “build a centralized technological system” in an effort to “seamlessly record every payment issued by the agency pursuant to each of the agency’s covered contracts and grants, along with a brief, written justification for each payment submitted by the agency employee who approved the payment.”

Read the original article by clicking here.