Taxpayer Outrage: Paid To Quit?

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Government watchdogs say federal agencies spent an estimated $9.5 billion paying employees on administrative leave in 2025, a sixfold jump tied largely to a workforce reduction push.

Story Highlights

Government Accountability Office estimated $9.5 billion paid for administrative leave in 2025.
Roughly $6.7 billion linked to the Deferred Resignation Program aimed at shrinking the workforce.
Paid leave days surged to about 21.6 million in 2025 from roughly 4–4.4 million in prior years.
Office of Personnel Management says costs are one-time and offset by future savings.

What The Watchdog Found

The Government Accountability Office reported that agencies it reviewed spent an estimated $9.5 billion on paid administrative leave in 2025, about six times 2023 levels. Coverage of the report says the use of paid leave rose about 435 percent from 2023 to 2025. The watchdog tied much of the jump to a government effort to reduce headcount. The figure is an estimate rather than a full accounting, according to summaries of the findings.

Report summaries state that about $6.7 billion of the total was connected to the Deferred Resignation Program, which offered employees a path to exit later while not returning to the office in the meantime. About 70 percent of the 2025 paid leave was associated with that program, according to one account of the findings. These links explain why the leave costs rose so fast as many employees chose to resign on a set date.

How The Program Worked

Office of Personnel Management guidance described a deferred resignation option that let employees submit a future resignation date, often tied to September 30, 2025, while being exempt from return-to-office rules. Agencies had broad discretion to place such employees on paid administrative leave during the transition. That mechanism increased the number of people on leave at once, which raised payroll costs during the year.

Federal leave rules limit routine administrative leave to 10 workdays for certain cases, but Office of Personnel Management guidance explained how that cap does not block leave used for this workforce action. That interpretation allowed agencies to keep employees on paid leave until their set resignation dates. The legal and policy framework, together with high participation, helped drive the large cost estimate seen in the Government Accountability Office report.

The Stakes For Taxpayers

Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupper defended the spending as a one-time cost that would be offset by projected long-term savings from a smaller federal workforce. The claim sets up a tradeoff: pay more now to spend less each year later. Government Accountability Office summaries also noted gaps in precise cost tracking, which means the $9.5 billion remains an estimate built from available data, not a final ledger total.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently published a report detailing how the Trump administration’s efforts to downsize the government led to $9.5 billion being spent on salary costs for administrative leave in 2025. This is six times the amount spent on… pic.twitter.com/xTXDAb4A1L

— Straight Arrow (@StraightArrow__) September 18, 2026

The number of paid leave workdays jumped from about four million in 2023, to about 4.4 million in 2024, and then to about 21.6 million in 2025. That spike captures how a policy choice can shift costs into a single year. For many readers, the core issue is not left or right. It is whether Washington manages change with clear plans, honest math, and respect for taxpayers who expect real value for every public dollar.