Federal employees were paid nearly $7B not to work under DOGE effort: GAO

A government watchdog report reveals the Trump administration spent nearly $7 billion in severance-like payments to encourage federal employees to resign, while also seeing a dramatic surge in paid leave usage—rising over 400 percent during the first two years of the presidency. The findings raise questions about workforce retention strategies and financial accountability in the public sector. Critics may scrutinize whether these measures reflect broader efforts to reshape federal employment or simply address operational gaps. The Government Accountability Office’s analysis offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at how administrative policies impacted federal workers.

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...