The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, is doing a total one-eighty on its recent cost-cutting measures. It turns out that hundreds of federal employees who were laid off are now being asked to return to work. The General Services Administration (GSA), which manages government workspaces, has given these workers until the end of the week to decide if they want their jobs back.
This is a pretty big deal because these employees have been on what the Associated Press called a “seven-month paid vacation,” and the GSA racked up some serious costs while they were gone. A former GSA official, Chad Becker, told the AP that the agency was left “broken and understaffed” and that “they didn’t have the people they needed to carry out basic functions.” It sounds like DOGE went a little too far, too fast, and now they’re in full “triage mode” trying to fix the mess.
The GSA’s sudden reversal isn’t an isolated incident, either, according to NBC. It’s part of a bigger trend. The IRS recently let some employees who took a resignation offer stay on the job, the Labor Department has brought back some workers who took buyouts, and the National Park Service also reinstated a number of purged employees. It seems like the “efficiency” cuts created more problems than they solved.
DOGE proven to have been reckless in cuts
The GSA is a pretty important agency; it was established back in the 1940s to handle the acquisition and management of thousands of federal workplaces. Starting in March, thousands of GSA employees either resigned or were outright dismissed as part of this aggressive push to shrink the federal workforce. The wild part is, even though many of these workers weren’t showing up for duty, they were still getting paid.
A GSA spokesman, in an email to the AP, said, “GSA’s leadership team has reviewed workforce actions and is making adjustments in the best interest of the customer agencies we serve and the American taxpayers.” That’s the official word, but it doesn’t exactly tell the whole story. Democrats have been quick to criticize the Trump administration’s approach to these cuts.
Rep. Greg Stanton of Arizona, the top Democrat on the GSA oversight subcommittee, told the AP that there is “no evidence that reductions at the agency ‘delivered any savings.’” He added, “It’s created costly confusion while undermining the very services taxpayers depend on.”
AP: Trump administration rehires hundreds of federal employees laid off by DOGE.
— The Gray Seeker (@TheGraySeeker) September 24, 2025
Wonder how it feels seeing everything you attempt fail or be retracted, over and over and over.#theseekeriswatching and #laughing at #DOGE
DOGE had identified the GSA as a primary target in its mission to reduce “fraud, waste and abuse” in the federal government. At the start of the administration, the GSA had about 12,000 employees. Elon Musk’s trusted aides, who were reportedly even sleeping on cots at GSA headquarters, were pushing to cancel almost half of the 7,500 leases in the federal portfolio and sell off hundreds of federally owned buildings to generate billions in savings.
The GSA actually sent over 800 lease cancellation notices to landlords, sometimes without even telling the government agencies that were using the buildings. There was swift backlash, and both of those plans have been scaled back. Over 480 of the leases that were slated for termination have now been spared. These include offices for agencies like the IRS, Social Security Administration, and the Food and Drug Administration.
The initial promise from DOGE’s “Wall of Receipts” was that these lease cancellations alone would save nearly $460 million. However, Chad Becker, the former GSA official, said that the estimate was reduced to just $140 million by the end of July, and we don’t know how much of that had to be reversed anyway, since many cuts were foolish.
