Politics
DOGE Deactivates 500,000 Government-Issued Credit Cards
The Department of Government Efficiency announced Wednesday that it had deactivated more than 500,000 government-issued credit cards as part of a rapidly-expanding audit that is expected to result in additional deactivations.
“The program to audit unused/unneeded credit cards has been expanded to 32 agencies. After 10 weeks, more than 500K cards have been de-activated,” DOGE announced in an X post. The department noted that at the start of the audit, there were roughly 4.6 million active credit cards or accounts.
When DOGE last provided an update on its credit card audit on March 11, the department had cancelled a little more than 200,000 cards across 16 agencies, representing a massive increase of cancellations in the latest update. “So still more work to do,” the post concluded.
Exact figures on expected savings have not yet been released by the DOGE team. Earlier this year, DOGE said the 4.6 million credit cards were used for 90 million unique transactions, totaling around $40 billion worth of spending in the fiscal year 2024.
Expenditures increased dramatically under the Biden Administration. In the fiscal year 2022, credit card expenditures totaled $32.8 billion, constituting a nearly $7 billion dollar jump in just two years.
As of this report, the DOGE team has deactivated 169,793 purchase cards and 330,330 travel cards. Agencies and departments with the most cuts include the Department of the Interior, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Health and Human Services.
President Trump has assured that the Department of Government Efficiency will continue its mission of cutting waste, fraud and abuse at the federal level even as the initiative’s founder, Elon Musk, takes a step back from his administration role.
While speaking with Fox News, Musk said he enjoyed his time working directly with the administration and believes DOGE has done essential work. His exit is more tied to his desire to focus on his numerous business endeavors, the Tesla, X and SpaceX chief told Lara Trump.
“It’s not been boring, that’s for sure — an eventful year to say the least. At least I didn’t get shot, you know. Look on the bright side,” Musk said. “But we have had people shoot up Tesla stores and burn down Tesla cars. I wasn’t expecting that level of violence, really,” he continued.
While Musk said he is proud of his work with DOGE and is confident the team will continue to scale back government waste, he said he wants his legacy to most be defined by facilitating the “furtherance of civilization.”
“That I helped move civilization forward, added to the store of knowledge and capability — that I helped to understand the universe,” Musk said of his legacy.
