Ernst introduces bill to put $400 million in federal buildings up on auction block

WASHINGTON — US Senate Department of Government Efficiency Caucus chairwoman Joni Ernst is introducing a bill that she says will get rid of federal office building space, and in turn avoid a huge investment of taxpayer dollars spent on overdue maintenance.

Ernst says her “Federal Office Realignment and Sale of Assets for Leveraging Efficiency Act” (FOR SALE) would downsize Washington’s bloated real estate portfolio and save taxpayers billions of dollars. “I am here at the United States Department of Agriculture South Building in Washington DC, where a recent report showed that only about 22% of this building is actually occupied. Even though I work with President Trump on bringing federal workers back, still a lot of unused space, and that unused space costs taxpayers $11 million every single year to keep up this building.”

The six buildings that Ernst proposes putting on the auction block are the Department of Agriculture South Building, as well as federal buildings named after Hubert H. Humphrey, Frances Perkins, James Forrestal, Theodore Roosevelt, and Robert Weaver. “What I am going to do is take six properties like this building here where bureaucrats are not using this space, we’re going to package them together and we are going to send them to the auction block. We will raise over $400 million, raise that revenue, but then it won’t cost the taxpayers billions and billions and of dollars in upgrades for office space that they are not going to use.”

A General Services Administration report issued last month said that deferred maintenance exceeds $6 billion and will grow to $20 billion in five years.