The White House is begging hundreds of federal employees laid off by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency to come back to work.
Under Musk’s leadership, DOGE fired tens of thousands of federal workers as part of sweeping government cost-cutting efforts. The SpaceX and Tesla CEO, who is no longer associated with DOGE, said he wanted to reduce the deficit by $1 trillion.
But the strategy apparently backfired at the General Services Administration (GSA), as hundreds of employees who managed government workspaces are being offered their jobs back. They have until Sunday to make up their minds, according to the Associated Press, which cited an internal memo.
GSA slashed staff at its headquarters by 79 percent, its portfolio managers by 65 percent, and facilities managers by 35 percent, according to a federal official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The understaffed GSA was left in a mess, according to another former employee who said the downsizing happened too quickly. Too many people were given the boot and GSA has been in a “triage mode” for months, he said.
“Ultimately, the outcome was the agency was left broken and understaffed,” former GSA real estate official Chad Becker told the news agency. “They didn’t have the people they needed to carry out basic functions.”
Employees who choose to accept reinstatement will be back to work on Oct. 6, after what AP said amounted to “a seven-month paid vacation.”
During that time, it added, GSA has incurred significant expenses to maintain office space. The federal agency continued paying for dozens of properties it had intended to vacate or whose leases had expired, with the costs ultimately borne by taxpayers.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and GSA for comment.
GSA is just one of several federal agencies targeted by DOGE as part of brutal efforts to slash costs across the board.
DOGE claims to have slashed $206 billion in wasteful spending since Jan. 20 through a combination of asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions.
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