An Excellent Target for DOGE
Hats off to Sen. Joni Ernst for uncovering the unsettling truth: Even years post-pandemic, only 6% of federal employees are reporting to the office in-person, with almost a third working remotely full-time.
What a privilege!
“The nation’s capital resembles a ghost town,” Ernst (R-Iowa) lamented, highlighting a dismal 12% occupancy rate in federal office buildings in DC.
It’s no wonder that no one at the Pentagon noticed Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s absence during his secret hospitalization at Walter Reed last December.
The senator posed an important question: “If federal employees can’t be found at their desks, just where are they?”
More crucially: How hard are they really working?
How many employees does the nation truly require?
Enter DOGE, the government efficiency panel co-chaired by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
It’s not surprising that the Biden administration didn’t prioritize pushing federal unions to bring workers back; the Trump team will now need to take the lead — while utilizing this data to address excess.
Last year, Team Biden urged agencies to “significantly enhance meaningful in-person work,” but union leaders pushed back, with one asserting that the new guidelines “do not supersede collective-bargaining agreements.”
Unfortunately, whatever workplace-safety stipulations exist in those labor agreements cannot possibly justify this absurdity.
President Franklin Roosevelt — a liberal Democrat — clearly understood the risks associated with collective bargaining power among unions in the federal sector: Public-sector unions have become a liability for federal, state, and local governments.
Ernst’s efforts also strongly advocate for relocating entire agencies outside of DC: According to her report, the costs for leasing, operating, and maintaining federal office buildings amount to approximately $15.7 billion annually.
While downsizing the cumbersome and inefficient federal workforce might not significantly reduce the federal deficit, it would certainly represent a necessary step towards accountability that is long overdue.
