2026-09-15
A government watchdog (GAO) report found that federal employees were paid administrative leave without working as part of the Department of Government Efficiency's (DOGE) effort to reduce the federal workforce. Both outlets report that use of paid administrative leave increased by 435 percent under the first two years of the Trump administration.
The two outlets largely align on the underlying GAO findings but differ in the total dollar figure cited, the New York Times reports $9.5 billion in payments for employees not working, while The Hill cites a lower figure of nearly $7 billion. The Hill's headline and text more explicitly frame the payments as an incentive to encourage employees to leave federal service, while the New York Times frames it primarily as a cost associated with the DOGE workforce-reduction program.
Frames the payments as a costly outcome of the DOGE program to shrink the federal workforce, emphasizing the total dollar amount and the sharp rise in paid leave usage.
According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report published Tuesday, the use of paid administrative leave increased by 435% from 2023 to 2025.
As part of the Department of Government Efficiency’s program to shrink the federal work force, paid administrative leave costs rose by 435 percent.
Framing analysis generated by claude-sonnet-5. It describes how coverage differs, not who is correct.