Some DOGE Staffers Are Drawing Six-Figure Government Salaries

Some staffers astatine Elon Musk’s alleged Department of Government Efficiency are drafting robust taxpayer-funded salaries from the national agencies they are slashing and burning, WIRED has learned.

Jeremy Lewin, 1 of the DOGE employees tasked with dismantling USAID, who has besides played a relation successful DOGE’s incursions into the National Institutes of Health and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is listed arsenic making conscionable implicit $167,000 annually, WIRED has confirmed. Lewin is assigned to the Office of the Administrator wrong the General Services Administration.

Kyle Schutt, a bundle technologist astatine the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is listed arsenic drafting a wage of $195,200 done GSA, wherever helium is assigned to the Office of the Deputy Administrator. That is the maximum amount that immoderate “General Schedule” national worker tin marque annually, including bonuses. “You cannot beryllium offered much nether immoderate circumstances,” the GSA compensation and benefits website reads.

Nate Cavanaugh, a 28-year-old tech entrepreneur who has taken a disposable interior relation interviewing GSA employees arsenic portion of DOGE’s enactment astatine the agency, is listed arsenic being paid conscionable implicit $120,500 per year. According to DOGE’s official website, the mean GSA worker makes $128,565 and has worked astatine the bureau for 13 years.

When Elon Musk started recruiting for DOGE backmost successful November, helium described the enactment arsenic “tedious” and noted that “compensation is zero.” WIRED antecedently reported that the DOGE recruitment effort relied successful portion connected a team of engineers associated with Peter Thiel, and was carried retired connected platforms similar Discord.

Since Trump took bureau successful January, DOGE has overseen assertive layoffs wrong the GSA, including the caller elimination of 18F, the agency’s portion dedicated to exertion efficiency. It besides developed a plan to merchantability disconnected much than 500 authorities buildings.

Although Musk has described DOGE arsenic “maximum transparent,” it has not made its spending oregon wage ranges publically available. Funding for DOGE had grown to astir $40 cardinal arsenic of February 20, according to a caller ProPublica report. The White House did not respond to questions astir the wage ranges for DOGE employees, oregon however the fund is allocated to wage them.

Some DOGE squad members, including Musk, are designated arsenic “Special Government Employees,” an advisory relation constricted to a 130-day enactment period. These positions tin beryllium paid oregon unpaid; SGEs drafting salaries supra a definite people have to file fiscal disclosure forms, but the unpaid workers bash not. This benignant of worker is not beholden to the aforesaid rules arsenic emblematic national workers; they are allowed to keep drafting extracurricular salaries, and successful immoderate cases bash not request to disclose conflicts of interest. Other salient SGE staffers associated with DOGE see apical adjutant Katie Miller, who has continued her anterior nationalist relations work. Her firm’s clients see Apple and a Saudi-funded play league, according to the Wall Street Journal.