Ernst shares report out­lin­ing prob­lems with gov­ern­ment tele­work at DOGE meet­ing

In a state­ment to the Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er, Ernst expressed her opti­mism in the report help­ing the work of DOGE.

“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,” Ernst said. “We need to flip Wash­ing­ton on its head, make bureau­crats show up to work like the rest of us, and eval­u­ate indi­vid­ual per­for­mance in the same way every busi­ness in Amer­i­ca does. I am excit­ed to work with DOGE and the Trump admin­is­tra­tion to dis­rupt the bureau­crat class and bring com­mon sense to the cap­i­tal.”

The report out­lined the costs asso­ci­at­ed with fed­er­al work­ers work­ing from home. Three per­cent of the fed­er­al work­force tele­worked dai­ly before COVID-19, accord­ing to the report. Now, only 6% of work­ers report in-per­son full time, with a third entire­ly remote. Ernst’s report warned that tele­work led to slack­ing, with work­ers report­ed­ly caught in leisure­ly activ­i­ties while work­ing.

“Bureau­crats have been found in a bub­ble bath, on the golf course, run­ning their own busi­ness, and even get­ting bust­ed doing crime while on tax­pay­ers’ time,” the report read.

It claimed that due to tele­work, ser­vices were suf­fer­ing.

“Ser­vice back­logs and delays, unan­swered phone calls and emails, and no-show appoint­ments are harm­ing the health, lives, and aspi­ra­tions of Amer­i­cans,” it added, as bureau­crats are “phon­ing it in.”

On the oth­er hand, the report argued that if tele­work­ing is to be con­tin­ued, many gov­ern­ment build­ings should no longer be main­tained.

“Not a sin­gle head­quar­ters of a major agency or depart­ment in the nation’s cap­i­tal is even half full,” it read. “Gov­ern­ment build­ings aver­age an occu­pan­cy rate of 12%.”

The report said $8 bil­lion is spent year­ly main­tain­ing and leas­ing gov­ern­ment office build­ings and $7.7 bil­lion on the ener­gy to keep them run­ning. The gov­ern­ment owns 7,697 vacant build­ings and anoth­er 2,265 par­tial­ly emp­ty build­ings.

It con­clud­ed by rec­om­mend­ing a “use it or lose it” pol­i­cy toward fed­er­al real estate, mov­ing fed­er­al employ­ees clos­er to their place of work, end­ing blan­ket tele­work and instead going on a case-by-case basis, and track­ing employ­ees.

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“If bureau­crats don’t want to return to work, make their wish come true,” the report read.

Ernst has been a lead­ing con­gres­sion­al sup­port of the DOGE, hav­ing made much of her career about cuts to gov­ern­ment waste. She recent­ly hand-deliv­ered a report to DOGE heads Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk and Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump, out­lin­ing a plan to cut over $2 tril­lion in waste.