Another significant move has been made by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is working to save unnecessary spending and streamline federal operations.
After a five-week assessment that focused on underused or superfluous accounts across several agencies, the department said that it had terminated around 300,000 government-issued credit cards.
DOGE verified that some 298,000 credit card accounts have been terminated thus far in a post published on X on Sunday.
“As a reminder, at the start of the audit, there were ~4.6M active cards/accounts, so still more work to do,” the organization stated.
Musk’s larger goal of reducing $1 trillion in federal spending includes this action.
Data released in February showed that during the fiscal year 2024, the government credit card system accounted for approximately 90 million unique transactions and an estimated $40 billion in spending.
Finding superfluous or dormant accounts and eliminating abuse in government procurement systems were the goals of DOGE’s audit.
As government layoffs increase, SBA loan policies are updated
DOGE has released new recommendations aimed at the Small Business Administration (SBA), another department under its reform purview, in addition to reducing the use of government credit cards.
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The government announced that SBA loan applicants will now need to submit their birthdate. Under the new regulation, direct loans will no longer be available to anyone who are younger than 18 or older than 120.
In a different article on X, DOGE stated that “basic sanity checks like these are initial steps toward minimizing fraud in government payment programs.”
The new regulations follow extensive structural changes at the SBA, which has announced plans to cut 43 percent of its personnel, or roughly 2,700 jobs out of a total of almost 6,500 employees.
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According to the agency, a modest number of direct layoffs will be implemented in addition to the expiration of temporary appointments, many of which were established in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, and voluntary departures.
The SBA stressed that its essential services, such as loan guarantees, disaster relief, and veteran outreach, will continue to run smoothly in spite of the reduction.
This Information has been sourced from Marca.
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