The Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE) issued a new update in its ongoing audit of government credit cards. This has been a significant focus for the department, and DOGE has issued updates on its findings weekly on X. Their most recent post announced the cancellation of over 200,000 government credit cards.
According to their post, DOGE has continued its pilot program with 16 federal agencies to audit unused cards. They say that while hundreds of thousands of credit cards have been deactivated, millions more need to be deactivated.
For context, DOGE acts on the president’s authority, and Trump directly addressed this issue in one of his executive orders. The EO, titled IMPLEMENTING THE PRESIDENT’S “DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY” COST EFFICIENCY INITIATIVE, was released on February 26, 2025, and gave DOGE sweeping authority. Trump singled out credit cards as being a special area for attention.
“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,” Trump ordered. However, the president carved out an exception “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.”
Their recent post on March 24, 2025, said the audit was still ongoing. DOGE said, ” Weekly Credit Card Update! Pilot program with 16 agencies to audit unused/unneeded credit cards. After 5 weeks, ~298,000 cards have been deactivated. As a reminder, at the start of the audit, there were ~4.6M active cards/accounts, so still more work to do.”
In the comments, users were supportive of the move. One comment noted that federal jobs had been treated as ‘free money’ before DOGE. The comment said, “Wow. Nonstop free spending money machine paid by yours truly… hard-working Americans. So nauseating to know the truth…but thankful it’s been uncovered once and for all. We will need very honest financiers here on out!!! Make America Honest…for the first time.”
Other users brainstormed solutions for this massive issue. A comment read, “Why are we not creating a new official Treasury credit card and cancelling all old credit cards? Ask each agency who should have a credit card, issue them a new Treasury card, and turn in the old one. Contacting the credit card companies to cancel is easier than sorting 5 million cards. Stop the bleeding as soon as possible!”
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Another lengthy comment was shocked by the scope of the graft. The comment read, “It’s about time someone took action on this massive waste! 298,000 cards deactivated in 5 weeks is a great start, but let’s not kid ourselves, there’s still a mountain of work ahead. With 4.6 million active accounts, the real question is: Why did it take so long to get to this point?”
The same comment said this common sense audit should have been done years ago. It read, “This pilot program should’ve been implemented years ago. How many billions of dollars are being wasted on unused cards and accounts that aren’t benefiting anyone? The lack of urgency in tackling this problem is frustrating, especially when we’re constantly told about the need for fiscal responsibility.”