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[Trump Administration Spends $7 Billion to Keep Employees "Off Work," DOGE Under Further Review] (1) A new government report shows that the Trump administration spent $7 billion to pay the salaries of employees who did not work during the buyout program, triggering a new round of review of the "DOGE era." The GAO estimates that after the DOGE, led by Musk, launched the buyout program, the government spent $6.7 billion on administrative leave; those who accepted the buyout received their salaries until the end of the fiscal year, and some people continued to receive salaries even though they did not perform their duties for several months during the deferred resignation period. (2) The report found that the use of paid leave in 2025 surged by 435% compared to 2023, and related personnel costs increased sixfold; the total number of paid administrative leave working days rose from about 4 million days to 21.6 million days; and the number of people taking more than three months of paid leave soared from 600 to nearly 100,000. The GAO estimates that 144,312 federal employees used the deferred resignation program. (3) Lawmakers’ criticism: Don Byr said it was stupid to pay employees to stay home for months doing nothing while depriving the public of their rightful services. He said the DOGE used the stupidest way to reduce staff. Subramaniam also said it was not surprising and that people who could eliminate waste, fraud and abuse should be kept in office. (4) Government’s defense: The Director of the Office of Personnel Management, Cooper, said that 270,000 federal employees have left since Trump took office. Paid leave cost a total of $9.5 billion, of which $6.7 billion was due to buyouts. He said this was a one-time expense, and that the annual cost of 270,000 employees was over $40 billion, so the government saved over $40 billion annually, a return of over 400%, and recouped its investment in less than six months. The White House did not respond to requests for comment. (5) Critics believe that other factors were not taken into account. The Public Service Partnership estimated that 132,000 people accepted buyouts. With layoffs and retirements, a total of 319,000 employees will leave in 2025, a record high, twice the annual average. However, the government then hired 20,557 people to fill the positions, and these new employees were often less experienced. Union member Huddleston questioned how the work was done, whether it was outsourced or rehired, arguing that the costs needed to be calculated to prove the savings. Bayer and Ive also criticized the dismissal of experienced workers and the hiring of new ones, saying it would take months or even years to get it right; Ive called Musk “running around like a madman, wielding a chainsaw,” one of the worst management failures in 50 years. Subramaniam considered the report to be a “conservative estimate” and argued that project losses and loss of expertise needed to be considered. (6) DOGE also faced backlash for other cuts, with multiple reports finding that it consistently overestimated its savings. The GAO’s August report found that DOGE’s “receipt wall” attributed the savings it was already implementing to itself and did not provide enough information to verify the calculation method for its 96% savings. Huddleston said the government had not yet proven that DOGE lived up to its name, that the costs were extremely high but the benefits were unclear, and that the whole undertaking appeared to be a huge failure.