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Topics: Politics, Donald Trump, Business, News, Money
Emily Brown
Topics: Politics, Donald Trump, Business, News, Money
Donald Trump has issued a freeze on all government credit cards as one of his latest shows of power since returning to the White House.
The POTUS signed the new executive order on Wednesday (February 26), after the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) claimed that credit cards issued to members of the government have been responsible for $40 billion in spending last year.
In part, the order reads: "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."
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There are approximately 4.6 million credit cards being used within the government, and the freeze applies to all cards 'except 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 Head'.
Other exceptions include cards 'subject to such additional individualized or categorical exceptions as the Agency Head, in consultation with the agency's DOGE Team Lead, deems appropriate'.
The 30-day freeze comes a week after DOGE announced on Twitter that it was 'working with' the agencies which have government credit cards to 'simplify the program and reduce admin costs'.
"We will report back in 1 week," the department added at the time.
Now, the executive order has stated that DOGE is planning to build a 'centralized technological system within the agency' which will keep a record of 'every payment issued by the agency pursuant to each of the agency's covered contracts and grants'.
The system will also ask workers to explain their payments with a 'brief, written justification' submitted by the agency employee who approved the payment.
By signing the executive order, Trump has given DOGE more power over a 'cost efficiency initiative' and claims to have commenced 'a transformation in Federal spending on contracts, grants, and loans to ensure Government spending is transparent and Government employees are accountable to the American public'.
While the order aims to 'transform' federal spending, one federal government employee raised concerns about the impact of the freeze in a comment to Newsweek, suggesting it could be considered 'worse' than an entire government shutdown.
They said: "It honestly might be described as basically-a-government-shutdown but worse because of the uncertainty. Are [federal] employees still supposed to travel? Are they just supposed to use their personal cards and hope they get paid back?"
The General Services Administration has reported that government credit cards are issued to employees in more than 250 federal agencies and Native American tribal governments, and are used to 'make purchases on behalf of the federal government in support of their agency’s mission'.