How Federal Workers Are Dealing With the $1 Limit on Their Corporate Cards

“The more immediate problem seems to be the inability to buy equipment—like even a mouse or a keyboard—for all the federal workers who are supposed to return to the office,” said Bella Dinh-Zarr, a former vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. Dinh-Zarr is a veteran of two other federal agencies who has been hearing from former colleagues about the restrictions.

President Trump signed an executive order last week that called for the prohibition of nonessential travel alongside the credit-card freeze. The General Services Administration said in a Feb. 22 email, which was viewed by The Wall Street Journal, that all government purchase and travel cards would carry spend thresholds of $1, with limited exceptions.

Employees using credit cards for expenses related to disaster relief and natural-disaster response benefits are exempted, as are whatever expenses agency heads consider appropriate, “in consultation with the agency’s DOGE Team Lead,” according to the executive order, making reference to Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

Managers can seek approval for certain exemptions, though it wasn’t clear how widespread they would be. Government lawyers have been told that travel related to litigation, such as oral arguments, court cases and arbitrations, are considered “mission critical.”

But most federal employees can’t use their cards—and it is already starting to cause headaches.

At least some credit cards for Federal Aviation Administration personnel had the $1 limit. PHOTO: STEFANI REYNOLDS/BLOOMBERG NEWS

At the Social Security Administration, some employees were notified last week that they could no longer create UPS shipping labels until further notice, according to an email viewed by the Journal.

At least some credit cards for Federal Aviation Administration personnel had the $1 limit, making it difficult for some employees to make purchases for government business, people familiar with the matter said. Some managers inside the FAA were left figuring out how to unfreeze credit cards needed for travel related to technology upgrades, one of the people said.

On Friday morning, lawyers at the Treasury Department were informed that access to the Public Access to Court Electronic Records, or PACER, which they use to monitor litigation, had been paused.

“The purchase card used to pay for PACER transactions is frozen. Given this situation, we cannot allow additional transaction charges to accrue on PACER,” said an email viewed by the Journal. Hours later, their access was restored, according to a person familiar with the decision.

A federal employee who oversees a small government advisory board said the office used government-issued credit cards to pay for items such as cellphone plans, office security, Microsoft 365 licenses and a $619 monthly fee for Amazon Web Services, which hosts the office’s server.

The employee—who quipped that it would take submitting 619 $1 payments to satisfy the Amazon bill—said that during the weekend, the card was declined for payments to Amazon, as well as to Verizon for a cellphone plan and for a subscription to the New York Times.

Managers have taken some steps to avoid embarrassing and inconvenient declines—such as having a card rejected at the Hertz counter, for example.

Treasury employees were told that those currently traveling wouldn’t have their card limits reduced to $1 until they returned, and the department would work on travel exceptions for those who have travel booked through mid-March, according to an email viewed by the Journal.

And unless cardholders are notified that they have received an exception, “individual cards will be reduced to the $1 threshold within the next two business days,” the email said.

A senior manager with the Internal Revenue Service said his card had a $5,000 limit last Tuesday but by Thursday it had a $1 threshold. The manager said the new rules might hamper revenue agents’ ability to conduct in-person audits of businesses.

IRS officials received confirmation Monday that no new travel authorizations would be approved that require the use of a government credit card, and local travel can be approved if it doesn’t have expenses that require the use of a government credit card.

The orders don’t apply to law-enforcement officers, active-duty military or reserves, or members of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Department of Homeland Security.

Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D., Va.), who represents more than 30,000 federal workers in his suburban Washington, D.C., district, said these kinds of changes create more bureaucracy.

“DOGE is not about getting rid of waste, fraud and abuse and improving government efficiency. It’s about control over federal workers and institutions and revenge over political opponents,” Subramanyam said.