Seizing Control Over Spending

• Control Over Treasury Spending: DOGE made an early move to get access to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service within the US Treasury Department, and early reporting (and litigation) about DOGE showed how they sought for Marko Elez to have superuser access over the Payment Automation Manager, which would give him insight and possibly the ability to control payments made by the US Treasury on behalf of executive agencies. Of course, not all payments go through the Treasury, so another executive order mandated that agencies must centralize how they track spending and put DOGE in charge of reviewing grants.
• Contract Cancellation: from the beginning, DOGE’s playbook for agencies has been to get inside and be granted access to their business systems for paying obligations and tracking contracts or grants. There is a clause in most federal contracts that allows for “termination for convenience.” This has traditionally been used during Presidential transitions to eliminate some contracts that don’t fit the priorities of the new administration, but DOGE has been using this clause to terminate everything, following a playbook at Twitter to cancel all contracts and then bring back what you quickly realize is essential, because things are breaking. Unfortunately, the government is not like Twitter. The rules for procurement are a lot more complicated, and also moving fast and breaking things could in some cases lead to people being harmed or even dying.
• Grant Revocation: The government also provides a large number of grants. There are also essentially contracts, the difference being the deliverables are often artistic, scientific or other abstract outcomes vs. goods and services provided to the government. DOGE has adopted the same convenience clause cancellation process, using the line that affected grants no longer “effectuate administration priorities.” But DOGE has also used Wreckers deployed at agencies to take control of the software systems used for awarding grants by granting them admin access. In one extreme case, Luke Farritor was granted admin access over grants.gov that would have allowed him to review and cancel grants from 18+ different federal agencies. But, even when DOGE is not directly in control of grant systems, they have used their outsized influence to force the White House’s priorities. For instance, as recently as early May Conor Fennessy was pushing staff at the Department of the Interior to cancel grants he deemed too supportive of DEI or addressing climate change.
• Eliminating Micro-Purchases the executive order that ordered agencies to work with DOGE and create centralized spending controls also mandated a 30-day freeze on government credit cards. These cards are similar to credit cards used for corporate expenses (albeit with stricter usage rules) and the program is administered from the GSA. Using their control of the agency and making the same empty claims about fraud and waste, DOGE quickly put the freeze into effect by enforcing a $1 spending limit on all cards without any warning. The result was pure chaos; these cards are used for official government travel for one thing. They also allow government contracting officers to bypass the laborious and slow rules that cover regular procurements to instead make “micro-purchases” for any goods and services that cost below $10,500 a year. With this capability suspended, social security field offices found themselves unable to purchase paper, NIH labs had to carefully ration reagents, and SaaS services like Mapbox became unavailable because they supported no mechanisms for payment besides credit cards.
• Centralizing IT Procurement at GSA another executive order centralized procurement in the GSA for IT systems across the entire government, under the argument that the GSA would better be able to track unused licenses or negotiate bulk discounts for products. Perhaps. But it also gives GSA enormous power to dictate software systems allowed within the government, putting pressure on tech firms to stay in Trump’s (or Musk’s) good graces. More importantly, this has been tried before, and there is a reason that agencies procure their own software directly. They are closer to understanding the needs of their users and more responsive if things need to change. It can be hard enough to get your own IT shop to purchase more licenses for needed software; now imagine having to mail an random email address at a different agency for it.