The ostensible point of this, according to WIRED’s reporting, was to “simplify” government purchasing and to cut costs. It won’t do any of that, of course. Its real point, and one that it will probably do just fine at, is to once again stop the government from performing its functions at any reasonable level. Some of it is targeted specifically, with Musk going after agencies that were investigating or otherwise in charge of regulating his companies, but the method will spray collateral damage across the country.
A source inside the EPA pointed out that the $1 credit card cap, which seems to have rolled out late on Monday night, will affect staff out in the field who need to make purchases. Like, say, the teams deployed to Los Angeles to “assess, remove, and safely dispose of hazardous materials from all burned area” in the wake of the January wildfires. Does Musk, or Trump, or anyone still working at DOGE, actually want the cleanup of the fires to stop? Probably not actively; they just don’t care what tragedies they leave in their wake.
It is possible, per one source at the DOI, that Musk and his minions seized on mundane detail around government credit cards as justification for the rampage: because there varying types of cards, there are more of them then there are federal employees. This is not, actually, wasteful or fraudulent — there are purchase cards, travel cards, and fleet cards, the latter of which stays specifically with a government-owned vehicle. Freezing those means employees that routinely go out into the field — like, say DOI staff that ensure water supplies and water sources are safe — may not be able to do their jobs at all. As the source at DOI said, this can “eventually put public safety at risk.”
Other agencies are already trying to manage the potential for the $1 cap to hit them. A source at the Department of Health and Human Services who is due to travel soon wondered if their card will function, or if they will be stuck with a bill for something required for their job. Which is, again, the point: keep everyone unsettled, underproductive, unhappy, non-functional. There is no “savings” here, not when the things you cut, or freeze, or otherwise undercut actually had functions that helped the country; there is only damage, and confusion, and chaos.
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