The US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has been asked to allocate millions of dollars to fund positions in billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The request covers costs for 20 full-time roles from January 20 to July 4, 2026, with the total amount potentially exceeding $4 million, according to a draft agreement obtained by CNN.
The agreement requires OPM to make advance monthly payments for DOGE's work. It also includes a clause saying that if DOGE does less work than expected, it may reimburse the agency.
The agreement specifies that the 20 positions at DOGE would be paid at the highest of 15 federal pay grades, with salaries starting at $141,817 annually and reaching $189,950 in the Washington, DC, area. Over the 17.5-month period, this would total approximately $4.1 million.
It remains unclear whether any payments have already been made.
As per the draft, DOGE will help modernise OPM's IT systems, citing an "immediate and critical need" for upgrades that the agency is not equipped to handle alone. OPM would also be required to grant DOGE access to its data and systems while providing operational and technical support.
An OPM employee, against the arrangement, told CNN, "Some people think they are working for free. No, we are paying. It's like having a contract with an entity to perform services, except this is forced on us, so we are forced to do an agreement to retain their services."
Little information has been disclosed about DOGE's budget and funding sources. The department operates under the Office of Management and Budget, which shields it from federal public records laws. The White House has said that Musk is not the administrator of DOGE but serves as an adviser to President Donald Trump, a role protected under executive privilege.
Questions remain about how much of DOGE's initiatives are costing taxpayers. Musk has described himself as a volunteer, while DOGE employees have undefined roles. "Some people are federal employees," Musk told Fox News host Sean Hannity. "But it's fair to say that the software engineers at DOGE could be earning millions of dollars a year and instead are earning a small fraction of that as federal employees."
Musk has been vocal about his views on government spending. Earlier, in a podcast with Joe Rogan, he called government-funded NGOs "a nightmare" and suggested they were a loophole for financial gain.
DOGE has framed its work as a necessary step to reduce wasteful spending, arguing that the US government is losing $2 trillion a year and failing audits. Elon Musk cited an example where a $12 billion allocation to the Navy resulted in no extra submarines.
