Federal workers were paid $9.5 billion not to work during the DOGE-led drive to shrink the government, according to a congressional watchdog.
The Government Accountability Office found paid administrative surged 435 percent from 2023 to 2025, with as much as $6.7 billion of that associated with the administration’s deferred resignation program.
The DRP, a key feature of the DOGE-led crackdown, involved a January 2025 offer by the Trump administration to around 2 million federal workers.
Employees were given the option to resign while receiving full pay and benefits until September 30 that year. Some 139,963 people took up the offer, data shows.
The report, published Tuesday, analyzed payroll data from 76 agencies, representing around 95 percent of the federal workforce.
Senator Patty Murray, vice-chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, tore into the Trump administration in a statement addressing the report’s findings.
“After promising to cut waste, Trump instead set billions upon billions in taxpayer dollars on fire to quite literally pay people not to do jobs they loved - from researching cancer cures to taking care of our National Parks, and so much else,” she said.
“Trump spent billions to push out experienced and badly needed experts across government - this was the most expensive way imaginable to make government worse.”
The Office of Personnel Management criticized the GAO’s findings in a statement to The Independent.
“The GAO report fails to highlight the difference between a one-time expense ($9.5 billion) to reduce the size of the federal government by 270,000 employees and the $40 billion per year savings in taxpayer dollars that this reduction provides,” a spokesperson said.
“That 400% return on investment is a massive benefit to the taxpayer.”
Slashing the size of the federal government was one of Trump’s key policies when running for president in 2024, backed by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
When Trump took office, Musk became the de facto head of DOGE - an acronym that stands for Department of Government Efficiency, but shares a name with Musk’s favored meme-based cryptocurrency.
The department officially shut down in July, with its de facto leader infamously leaving the Trump administration a year earlier amid rumors of a feud with the president.
The official DOGE website estimates that around $215 billion has been saved overall through its efforts.
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