Trump administration’s DRP cost $6.7B last year, watchdog estimates

The Government Accountability Office recently made big headlines with its report on the cost of the deferred resignation program. In 2025, agencies spent nearly $7 billion paying federal employees *not* to work. But there's more to the story beyond the headline, like the other factors to consider when calculating DRP costs versus savings, and the limitations of what we actually know about the program. To get into the details, Federal News Network's Drew Friedman sat down with the author of the widely covered report, GAO's Director of Strategic Issues Dawn Locke..See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.