The Trump administration paid $9.5 billion for federal employees NOT to work in 2025. The government had set out to reduce spending and the size of federal bureaucracy - but instead their ‘one-time-offer’ resulted in thousands of employees using administrative leave for months - or risk being fired anyways. Critics said it cut out decades of vital government experience from the workforce, but the government says it saved $200B in government spending - a figure that outside organizations could not independently verify. #news #politics #doge #trump #taxes