Some staffers at Elon Musk’s so-called Division of Authorities Effectivity are drawing strong taxpayer-funded salaries from the federal businesses they’re slashing and burning, WIRED has discovered.
Jeremy Lewin, one of many DOGE workers tasked with dismantling USAID, who has additionally performed a task in DOGE’s incursions into the Nationwide Institutes of Well being and the Client Monetary Safety Bureau, is listed as making simply over $167,000 yearly, WIRED has confirmed. Lewin is assigned to the Workplace of the Administrator throughout the Common Companies Administration.
Kyle Schutt, a software program engineer on the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company, is listed as drawing a wage of $195,200 by GSA, the place he’s assigned to the Workplace of the Deputy Administrator. That’s the most quantity that any “Common Schedule” federal worker could make yearly, together with bonuses. “You can’t be supplied extra below any circumstances,” the GSA compensation and advantages web site reads.
Nate Cavanaugh, a 28-year-old tech entrepreneur who has taken a visual inner position interviewing GSA workers as a part of DOGE’s work on the company, is listed as being paid simply over $120,500 per 12 months. In accordance with DOGE’s official web site, the common GSA worker makes $128,565 and has labored on the company for 13 years.
When Elon Musk began recruiting for DOGE in November, he described the work as “tedious” and famous that “compensation is zero.” WIRED beforehand reported that the DOGE recruitment effort relied partly on a workforce of engineers related to Peter Thiel and was carried out on platforms like Discord.
Since Trump took workplace in January, DOGE has overseen aggressive layoffs throughout the GSA, together with the latest elimination of 18F, the company’s unit devoted to know-how effectivity. It additionally developed a plan to unload greater than 500 authorities buildings.
Though Musk has described DOGE as “most clear,” it has not made its spending or wage ranges publicly accessible. Funding for DOGE had grown to round $40 million as of February 20, in response to a latest ProPublica report. The White Home didn’t reply to questions in regards to the wage ranges for DOGE workers or how the price range is allotted to pay them.
Some DOGE workforce members, together with Musk, are designated as “Particular Authorities Workers,” an advisory position restricted to a 130-day work interval. These positions may be paid or unpaid; SGEs drawing salaries above a sure grade need to file monetary disclosure varieties, however the volunteer employees don’t. One of these worker shouldn’t be beholden to the identical guidelines as typical federal employees; they’re allowed to maintain drawing outdoors salaries and in some circumstances don’t have to disclose conflicts of curiosity. Different outstanding SGE staffers related with DOGE embody high aide Katie Miller, who continued her prior public relations work by the transition and greater than a month into the present administration. Her agency’s purchasers had included Apple and a Saudi-funded golf league, in response to The Wall Avenue Journal.
