The Musk Fiasco - $9.5 Billion for Employees Who Didn't Work

Elon Musk was supposed to teach Washington how to save money. His Department of Government Efficiency came in promising to shrink the federal government and eliminate waste. DOGE also wanted to go after fraud and abuse. Musk held out the prospect of $1 trillion in savings. The new estimate from the Government Accountability Office looks a whole lot less heroic. In 2025, the federal government reportedly spent $9.5 billion on paid administrative leave. Its use reportedly jumped 435 percent compared with 2023, reaching more than 6 times the level from back then. Of that amount, $6.7 billion went to DOGE's deferred resignation program. Around 139,963 federal employees reportedly took the offer. They could submit their resignations and continue getting paid until they officially left, even though they were no longer working. So billions kept flowing while those jobs were already on their way out of the government. This was exactly the personnel policy that was supposed to save taxpayers money.

Trump and Musk have cut the number of federal employees by 12 percent since taking office in January 2025. The federal workforce got smaller. But there is still no corresponding proof of the savings they claim. The Trump administration claims it has saved more than $200 billion. That figure has not been proven. At the same time, the federal deficit has risen. The war with Iran has driven up government spending, as have the Republican tax cuts passed last year. On paper, the workforce cuts showed up quickly. Inside the agencies, the work remained. According to the Partnership for Public Service, more than 20,000 jobs that had been vacated through the resignation program were later filled again. Several agencies had previously lost experienced employees. The federal government then began recruiting new workers and shifted more of its focus toward people at the beginning of their careers. The government leaned more heavily on early-career workers when filling those positions. Where years of expertise had once sat, some of that experience now had to be built up all over again. That part does not show up in Musk's big savings number either.

That turned the savings program into a pretty expensive revolving door. Employees were paid to leave their jobs. Then the federal government went looking for people again to fill some of the positions that had been emptied. Nearly 140,000 people took the resignation offer. More than 20,000 jobs were later filled again. The government could remove people from the staffing statistics. The work inside those agencies did not disappear with them. Patty Murray, the Democratic senator from Washington state, sharply attacked the record on Tuesday. Trump had spent billions pushing experienced and badly needed experts out of government, she said. This had been "the most expensive way imaginable to make government worse," she said. That assessment comes from Murray. The $9.5 billion spent on paid administrative leave comes from the Government Accountability Office estimate.

Musk had promised $1 trillion in savings from DOGE. The administration now claims more than $200 billion in savings. No proof of that figure has been provided so far. On the other side of the ledger are $6.7 billion for the resignation program and a total of $9.5 billion for paid administrative leave in 2025. Then there is the fact that more than 20,000 of the jobs that had been vacated were later filled again. DOGE was supposed to show just how much money Washington was wasting. That is exactly why this bill matters. A program that sold itself on radical efficiency led to a sharp increase in paid administrative leave. Employees left, agencies lost experience and new people had to be found. Not every vacated position was filled again, but more than 20,000 were. The promised savings machine ate billions during the overhaul itself.

The numbers in the material already carry the contradiction within them. Musk had announced $1 trillion in savings. The Trump administration claims more than $200 billion as a success without having proven the figure. No research has come anywhere close to that amount. The opposite is true. For 2025, the Government Accountability Office estimate instead shows $9.5 billion in paid administrative leave. Of that, $6.7 billion went to DOGE's resignation program. That's what the math looks like after the great saving spree got underway.

And that $9.5 billion is only part of the bill. Since Trump returned to the White House in 2025, around $177 billion in federal grants have been cut or frozen. All 50 states and the District of Columbia have been affected. Health and nutrition were hit especially hard. Environmental programs and disaster relief also lost funding. The States United Democracy Center and Grant Witness compiled the cuts. The White House initially did not respond. At that point, DOGE starts looking like a pretty grotesque savings story. Billions are spent getting employees out the door while billions are simultaneously pulled from programs that actually fund services. Some of the positions that opened up are later filled again. Musk promised $1 trillion in savings. The Trump administration claims more than $200 billion. That figure still has not been proven. The billions that can actually be documented are sitting there in black and white on the other side of the ledger.

And that is exactly why the AfD belongs in this article. It also sells sweeping, incompetent cuts as some kind of political liberation. Washington is already showing what happens when government is treated like trash to be hauled away and someone later realizes the work still has to get done. This is what saving money, made by Trump, looks like. And anyone in Germany who thinks the same idea somehow gets smarter just because the AfD is behind it should probably read this bill first.