Last month, the Trump administration placed a $1 spending limit on most government-issued credit cards that federal employees use to cover travel and work expenses. The impacts are already widely felt.

At the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, scientists aren’t able to order equipment used to repair ships and radars. At the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), laboratories are experiencing delays in ordering basic supplies. At the National Park Service, employees are canceling trips to oversee crucial maintenance work. And at the Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), employees worry that mission-critical projects could be stalled. In many cases, employees are already unable to carry out the basic functions of their job.

“The longer this disruption lasts, the more the system will break,” says a USDA official who was granted anonymity because they aren’t authorized to speak to the media about the looming crisis.

    • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      I’m guessing it’d be technically illegal to cancel the cards but making them functionally useless is “a neat hack”.

    • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      I’d lean towards it being a case where routine expenses are presumed to be covered, and cancelling the card would just mean people payba different way. Setting a cap would change the definition of reasonable. I believe it also leaves existing already approved recurring transactions unchanged, since they probably don’t want to get sued for suddenly not paying bills.

      https://smartpay.gsa.gov/

      The government doesn’t run their own CC infrastructure, but they issue their own cards so cancellation is basically free. It’s kinda weird to say, but the government is bigger than any bank, so it makes sense that they would do things that even small banks are capable of.