The Trump administration cost the American taxpayer $11 billion by telling workers not to work under Elon Musk-inspired efforts to gut the federal workforce last year, a report found.
The Office of Personnel Management initiated the Deferred Resignation Program on January 28, 2025, after Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency sent the now-infamous “fork in the road” email to federal employees, allowing them to resign and continue to receive pay through September 30, 2025.
It resulted in nearly 140,000 federal workers being paid not to work for weeks or, in most cases, months, the cost totaled between $11.1 billion and $15.1 billion through March 2026, government watchdog Public Citizen’s analysis found.
Musk’s America PAC claimed that the move “could lead to around $100 billion in savings” at the time.
“The Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the federal government have been stupid, costly and deadly,” said Douglas Pasternak, a Public Citizen researcher who authored the report.
The report’s findings were based on data from the Office of Personnel Management, an HR-type agency for the government that oversees federal employees.
The Independent has contacted the agency for comment.
More than 106,000 federal employees separated from federal service in September 2025 under the offer, and an additional 24,000 left federal service by the end of December, according to Public Citizen. The Defense Department lost more than 48,000 employees as a result, while the Treasury Department lost 23,000. The Department of Agriculture lost more than 14,500.
Several federal court cases ruled that some of the Trump administration’s layoffs were illegal and demanded that terminated employees at the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, Interior, Labor and other agencies return to work. However, there are a multitude of ongoing court cases and some of those initial court decisions have been overruled in federal appeals courts, the report said.
At least ten federal agencies were forced to rehire employees who had opted into the Deferred Resignation Program because they later realized the staffers were essential to Congressionally mandated work.
Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia argued that Trump had no authority to make the offer at the time. “There’s no budget line item to pay people who are not showing up for work,” Kaine said.
The report concludes that the Deferred Resignation Program has been “the epitome of inefficiency” and “resulted in billions of dollars in wasted federal funds.”
“The administration’s inept and inefficient reductions in force policies are likely to be textbook examples of mismanagement in future business school classes,” the report continued.
“The American taxpayer has paid a significant financial price for the administration’s questionable actions and the long-term impact of these actions on virtually every facet of American life may be felt for years to come.”
