A new White House freeze on using government-issued credit cards is the latest shock for federal scientists, potentially affecting everything from conference travel to needed purchases for clinical care or lab work. A Cost Efficiency Initiative executive order issued yesterday states, “To the maximum extent permitted by law, all credit cards held by agency employees shall be treated as frozen for 30 days from the date of this order.” There can be exceptions for disaster relief or “other critical services,” but these must be approved by the agency’s head “in consultation with the agency’s DOGE Team Lead.”
Some researchers at U.S. health agencies are already telling ScienceInsider the order, which applies across the government, will have major implications if additional exceptions are not granted. “It will block all kinds of purchasing,” says one scientist at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) who spoke on condition of anonymity. A social media account claiming to represent NIH researchers worried the freeze will stymie supply purchases by labs and prevent NIH’s Clinical Center from buying medicine for patients in clinical trials.
Some health agency scientists looking forward to attending meetings after a travel ban was lifted last week are wondering whether they need to cancel their plans. “I have been awarded a speaking slot at meeting in a few months. I have to register to keep that slot. Now I cannot,” says one senior NIH scientist. Many scientists at NIH and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were likely planning to attend a major annual meeting on HIV and other retroviruses next month, but the credit card freeze could upend that.
Some NIH scientists believe the credit card freeze, if it holds, may only partially hinder travel. One says his group uses an outside contractor to book flights and hotels and another uses his personal credit card for hotels and then gets reimbursed.
But the new executive order also targets conference travel independent of the credit card freeze. It states, “The agency Head shall prohibit agency employees from engaging in federally funded travel for conferences … [absent] a brief, written justification.” It says a new technology system must be set up to record requests—and that their written justifications will in general be posted publicly.
A senior scientist at CDC predicts travel to conferences will be “essentially eliminated” under this new threshold. This scientist says: “If you can convince someone that going to this conference is critically important for the health of U.S. citizens, then maybe you will get an exemption. It’s gonna be that kind of bar.”
Another senior CDC scientist bemoaned the order’s freeze of a special category of credit card, government purchase cards, that are regularly used for so-called micropurchases of less than $10,000 such as critical lab reagents for detecting pathogens and repairing and maintaining equipment. The cards are “incredible for government efficiency, since [they] allowed our labs to purchase some of their approved regular supplies … rather than having to go through a multimonth contract solicitation,” the CDC scientist says. (Only a handful of management people can use this type of card, they note.)
After previous all-encompassing directives, President Donald Trump’s administration has granted exceptions and waivers. An NIH email seen by ScienceInsider told staff that leaders are seeking “additional guidance from HHS” (the Department of Health and Human Services) and to “please hold off on purchasing using the Government Purchase Card for now if possible.”
The governmentwide savings from the credit card freeze “are literally rounding errors on the federal budget,” the second CDC researcher says. “Which makes it incredibly frustrating since we already regularly audit and review these expenses, and we tailor them to the most critical public health priorities.”
More: https://www.science.org/content/article/trump-credit-card-freeze-sparks-alarm-health-agencies
