A new government watchdog report has put a price tag on the Trump administration's federal workforce reduction strategy, revealing that it spent billions of dollars to keep employees on the payroll while they did no work. The findings are reigniting bipartisan criticism of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and its leader, Elon Musk, over the costs and chaos of the mass buyout program.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimated that the administration spent $6.7 billion on administrative leave for federal workers who accepted the deferred resignation offer, a program that allowed employees to resign and continue receiving pay through the end of the fiscal year without having to report to work. The report, released Tuesday, shows that paid leave usage soared by 435% in 2025 compared to 2023, with the total number of paid administrative leave workdays jumping from about 4 million to 21.6 million.
The cost of salaries for employees on paid leave increased sixfold between 2023 and 2025. In 2023 and 2024, only 600 federal workers across the government took more than three months of paid leave; in 2025, that number skyrocketed to nearly 100,000. The GAO estimates that 144,312 federal workers participated in the deferred resignation program.
Lawmakers representing districts with large federal workforces were quick to condemn the approach. Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), whose district lost 20,000 federal jobs early in the Trump administration, called the buyout plan "stupid." He said, "First of all, how stupid was it to pay people to stay home for four or five months — or longer — getting paid, and they don't have to do anything, and we've robbed the American people of the services they were providing." He added, "There are ways to be more efficient. There are ways to shrink the headcount, and DOGE did it in the absolute stupidest way."
Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.) echoed that sentiment, saying he was not surprised by the cost. "We were saying that it makes more sense to keep the people who actually get rid of waste, fraud, and abuse in the government employed," he said. "Instead, they gave people this option and paid people not to work, and as a result, we're going to see more reports like this come out, showing how much money was lost and how much taxpayer money was wasted."
The Trump administration has defended the buyout costs, arguing that the payments are essentially salary costs that would have been incurred anyway. Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor noted that 270,000 federal workers have left the government since the start of the Trump administration, through buyouts, layoffs, or other means. He wrote in a blog post that even if the entire $9.5 billion in paid leave is attributed to the deferred resignation program, it is a one-time expense that saves taxpayers more than $40 billion annually in ongoing salary costs, a return of over 400%.
Critics, however, argue that the administration is ignoring other costs and consequences. The Partnership for Public Service estimates that 132,000 workers took the buyout, and with layoffs and retirements, a record 319,000 federal employees left in 2025—double the yearly average. The group also found that the government hired 20,557 people to backfill some of those roles, often with less experienced workers.
Andrew Huddleston, director of advocacy at the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, questioned whether any real savings will materialize. "All the work that these people are doing. How is that work getting done? Have they contracted out any of that work, have they rehired people to perform that same work, which we know they have done?" he said. "So you've got to net all that stuff out at the end to be able to prove any real savings over time."
Rep. Beyer also highlighted the loss of institutional knowledge, noting that many departing workers had decades of experience. "We've seen again and again how stupid it is to take people that have been doing a job for 20 or 25 or 30 years, know it really, really well, and you force them out either DOGE and RIFs, fork in the road, whatever," he said. "Then you have to hire brand new people who don't know the job at all."
The GAO report adds to growing scrutiny of the administration's workforce policies, with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle questioning the true cost of the DOGE experiment. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
