A new Senate report that outlines the costs of federal employees working from home shows only a minuscule 6% of government workers show up in person daily.
GOP Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa shared the report at Thursday’s first Department of Government Efficiency caucus meeting. According to the Washington Examiner, although 3% of the federal workforce worked from home each day before the COVID-19 pandemic, a third now work fully remotely.
The report added that this has caused an increase in people slacking on the job, including bureaucrats who are “found in a bubble bath, on the golf course, running their own business, and even getting busted doing crime while on taxpayers’ time.”
“Things are so upside down in the federal government that it is more common for employees to be overpaid than to work in the office five days a week,” said Ernst in a statement. “We need to flip Washington on its head, make bureaucrats show up to work like the rest of us, and evaluate individual performances in the same way every business in America does.”
Ernst, who has been DOGE congressional support, also recently hand-delivered a report to its leaders, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, along with President-elect Donald Trump, outlining a plan to cut over $2 trillion in wasted spending.
The senator added she is “excited to work with DOGE and the Trump administration to disrupt the bureaucrat class and bring common sense to the capital.”
Report claimed government services are suffering because of telecommuters
The Thursday report further claimed that government services are suffering because of telecommuters.
“Service backlogs and delays, unanswered phone calls and emails, and no-show appointments are harming the health, lives, and aspirations of Americans” because bureaucrats are “phoning it in,” said the report.
In the meantime, the document argues that if teleworking is going to continue, the government should stop maintaining many of its buildings.
“Not a single headquarters of a major agency or department in the nation’s capital is even half full,” per the report. “Government buildings average an occupancy rate of 12%.”
Instead, $8 billion per year is spent leasing and maintaining government buildings, while an additional $7.7 billion is spent keeping them running. The government owns 7.697 vacant buildings and a further 2,265 that are partially empty.
The report concluded that the government should “use it or lose it” when it comes to federal real estate and called on moving federal employees closer to their workplaces, tracking employees, and stopping the blanket use of telework.
