(WASHINGTON) — The federal government is paying more than 154,000 federal employees not to work as part of the deferred resignation program, an administration official confirmed to ABC News.
The updated figure, first reported by the Washington Post, includes thousands of government workers across dozens of agencies who took the buyout offers through June to maintain benefits and pay until the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.
It represents just over 6% of the 2.3 million federal civilian workforce.
To critics, the program has been administered haphazardly, throwing government offices into chaos and disrupting federal workers and programs indiscriminately, and prompting a number of legal fights between federal unions and the government — all of it at taxpayers’ expense.
“The American taxpayer ultimately is not only watching federal employees who are deeply interested in serving the public be sidelined, they’re having to pay for them too. It makes no sense at all,” Max Steier, the president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, told ABC News. “They’ve done ‘ready, fire, aim,’ instead of ‘ready, aim, fire.’ It’s detrimental to the capability of our government to meet our needs.”
To its proponents, the program has been an innovative way to streamline the federal government to focus on set priorities and recoup long-term cost savings after this fiscal year.
“Ultimately, the deferred resignation program was not only legal, it provided over 150,000 civil servants a dignified and generous departure from the federal government,” Office of Personnel Management spokeswoman McLaurine Pinover told ABC News. “It also delivered incredible relief to the American taxpayer. No previous administration has gotten even close to saving American taxpayers this amount of money in such a short amount of time.”
Former President Bill Clinton led an effort to reduce the federal workforce by more than 300,000 jobs, an initiative that took several years with congressional support.
The Office of Personnel Management could not tell ABC News how much the government is spending on salaries and benefits for workers who have not been working and are resigning — and how much the government has spent defending the “buyouts” in court.
In a report released Thursday, Senate Democrats estimated that the government has spent billions on workers who are on leave by choice or involuntarily due to litigation — and that the entire Department of Government Efficiency cost-saving campaign led by Elon Musk has cost the government $21.7 billion because of mistakes and waste.
The $21.7 billion figure provided by Democrats is an estimate that might include figures disputed by the administration. It also includes an estimate for 200,000 employees in the “buyout” program, when the actual figure is 154,000.
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