Trump administration paid federal employees $9.5B not to work under DOGE program

Sept. 15 (UPI) — The government paid federal employees more than $9 billion not to work during 2025 as part of the Department of Government Efficiency’s program to reduce bureaucracy and spending, a report released Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office said.

GAO is an independent, nonpartisan federal agency that serves as a congressional watchdog. In the new report, it found that the DOGE program to shrink the federal workforce through deferred resignations led to a 435% increase in paid administrative leave, six times as large as in 2023.

The Trump administration planned to drastically cut the size of the federal workforce as part of a plan to reduce wasteful federal spending, promising $1 trillion in savings.

GAO found that the Office of Personnel Management, which manages the federal government’s civil service, “directed agencies to use paid administrative leave to support the deferred resignation program, which generally allowed federal employees to be placed on leave until they resigned or retired by Sept. 30, 2025,” the report said.

The Trump administration has said its efforts led to $200 billion in savings, which has not been independently confirmed, The New York Times reported. The federal deficit has also increased due to the Iran conflict and Republican tax cuts in 2025.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a congressional hearing Tuesday that a government initiative to cut spending “is coming,” The Times said.

The deferred resignation program, announced by the Trump administration in early 2025, offered federal civilian employees full pay and benefits through September if they resigned by the end of that month. It came with a warning that they would likely to fired eventually if they did not take the offer.

Spending on civilian salaries and benefits marks a small part of the overall federal budget. About 2 million workers were offered the deferred resignation program, and 139,963 employees took it, The Times reported. Federal agencies have since had to rescind the resignations of some workers and backfill more than 20,000 positions.