DOGE deactivates over 500,000 credit cards across dozens of federal agencies

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has deactivated over half a million federal credit cards as part of an ongoing audit aimed at cutting unnecessary government spending.

In a post on X, DOGE announced that the over 500,000 suspended cards span across 32 federal agencies. DOGE added that at the start of the audit, there were roughly 4.6 million active credit cards and accounts in use.

“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 said in its post. "As a reminder, at the start of the audit, there were ~4.6M active cards/accounts, so still more work to do."

Accompanying the post was a graphic showing audit progress, revealing that 12 agencies have 90 percent audit completion or higher. These departments included the General Services Administration, the Department of Education, and the Social Security Administration.

In February, DOGE revealed that unused or unnecessary government credit cards processed 90 million transactions totaling $40 billion in spending during the 2024 fiscal year. The General Services Administration reported that the average transaction made with a federal card was $441. By March, DOGE had already suspended 200,000 cards from 16 agencies, making the current total more than double that figure.

“There are still almost twice as many credit/purchasing cards as people in the government, and the limits are $10,000!” said Elon Musk, who works with the DOGE team, in a post on X last March. “A lot of shady expenditures happening.”