Plus these people are unlikely to ever get paid. This is all operating outside of congress. If the institutions survive at all this could become a mess of expensive lawsuits and settlements. But I suppose their intention is to permanently cut Congress out of the picture.
You can also see the filings that show that Lindsey Graham doesn't get paid for being on their board, nor do any of their directors, and you can go see what they did spend money on. There's a more or less equivalent org that draws its directors from Democrats like this one does Republicans. Speaking of "uncovering" you can go read the press coverage from 2018 when the first Trump administration pushed to cut the funding of the National Endowment of Democracy (which sits above these two party-associated organizations). Of course this was in a time where the Trump administration actually behaved as if Congress controlled the funding.
For an amusing detail you can read the letter sent by senators at the time defending the NED's funding, and observe the signature of Marco Rubio, who now purports to have taken over USAID in his capacity as Secretary of State.
As far as I can tell there's not even any evidence that DOGE did anything specifically relating to this group beyond just that they killed USAID. DOGE fan Twitter accounts have posted about it, just linking to those same already-available filings. Fans just reading down the list of things USAID funded gets you this same result. It's definitely a good place to go if you want to see a bunch of incurious people posting "head exploding" emojis.
That's probably their angle but tbh I'd think more of the tenure of someone who turned down money to keep their job than one who quit it for a one time payment.
1. Under RIFs, close to half of the civil service will get a better severance than this offer. So any thinking person would wait for a RIF.
2. Under VERA, people will lose this "severance" but get access to their pensions years earlier. Since VERA only applies if you have 20+ years (25 if under 50) that's 20+% of their current high-3 for the rest of their lives, sets a nice baseline income. A WG employee who started at a depot at age 18 could collect their pension starting at age 43 and get $20-30k/year for the rest of their life and still be young enough to get another job and keep earning until 60 and retire a second time.
3. A substantial number of federal employees are already working on-site (not necessarily in offices) in areas where there are not a ton of other jobs. Ask a civil servant at China Lake to resign, they have to move too, there are few jobs in the area besides that base.
4. Many federal employees are federal employees because they care about the mission. They'd rather keep doing what's been asked of them to keep things like critical infrastructure operating than go home and let things fall apart because no one is doing the work.
But maybe the argument is if enough people take it before the March budget deadline, then each departments budget can be proportionately reduced in the next cycle.
Does anyone know the math and politics on this? Why didn't DOGE just put hiring freezes in place and wait for people to leave? Honest question. I'm not looking to bait anyone into mud slinging about Trump and Elon.