GAO finds administration spent billions on paid leave tied to DOGE efforts

The federal government paid employees $9.5 billion not to work in 2025 as a result of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.The New York Times, citing a new estimate from the Government Accountability Office, reports that DOGE’s deferred resignations program increased paid administrative leave by 435 percent in 2025. That’s an increase of over six times since 2023.President Trump and Musk’s efforts have shrunk the federal workforce by 12 percent since the inauguration in January last year, but that has not translated into any savings. The Trump administration claims that the government has saved over $200 billion, but that has never been proven, and the federal deficit has only shot up thanks to the Iran war and Republican tax cuts passed last year.Of the $9.5 billion figure, $6.7 billion was spent on DOGE’s deferred resignation offer, which about 139,963 federal employees took, resulting in several government departments losing their most experienced personnel. Many departments later scrambled to restaff those positions: The Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit organization, found that over 20,000 federal jobs vacated by the resignation program have been backfilled. The federal government has also tried to recruit new employees to fill the void, focusing on early-career workers.“Trump spent billions to push out experienced and badly needed experts across government—this was the most expensive way imaginable to make government worse,” said Democratic Senator Patty Murray in a statement Tuesday.DOGE was supposed to reduce the size of the federal government and eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse, with Musk promising $1 trillion in savings. Instead, the entire program appears to be a massive example of setting taxpayer dollars on fire.

The Trump administration spent $9.5 billion last year on paid administrative leave as it pushed to cut costs, the Government Accountability Office said.

The Trump administration paid outgoing employees an estimated nearly $7 billion to not work as it encouraged them to leave the federal service, a government watchdog found in a Tuesday report. Federal workers' use of paid leave increased 435 percent under the first two years of the Trump administration, a dynamic the Government Accountability Office...

As part of the Department of Government Efficiency’s program to shrink the federal work force, paid administrative leave costs rose by 435 percent.