Do Trump and Musk even know what the Government-wide Purchase Card is and what it is used for?

Following a cue from the DOGE team, Trump has frozen use of the Government-wide Purchase Card (GPC) by civilian employees for 30 days and demanded a list of every civilian who has one. The level of ignorance is astounding. The cost to the federal government will take months to assess. The uninformed general public will cheer because they think (like Trump, apparently) that all federal workers are walking around with credit cards they can use as they like while the taxpayers pay the bill. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are multiple levels of safeguards in place, audits are performed, and the amount of actual fraud, while not zero, is negligible. Since 1989, the federal government has authorized the issuance of the GPC to specially trained cardholders to make micro-purchases for their units. The emergence of the GPC allowed the federal government to eliminate thousands of procurement clerks and others involved in the labor-intensive process of issuing purchase orders for small purchases. The ill-advised EO has left agencies scrambling to keep their operations going without access to the GPC. They may not be able to do it. There are no "small purchase specialists" to do the work anymore. Even if there were, there is no one to process the financial documents or to validate receipt of the item purchased. It's time for Trump and the American public to understand that the federal government is not a monolith, neither is it anything like any of the relatively small operations Musk owns. Musk can fire people at will and cut off funds within his companies, but when he plays fast and loose with the taxpayers' money, he is putting vital services at risk. It's time to show DOGE the door before they break something so badly it can't be repaired. It also appears Trump and DOGE have also confused the GPC with the Government Travel Card, a credit card employees use for authorized travel expenses when on official business. You can't make this stuff up.