Sen­ate DOGE leader Ernst to take on gov­ern­ment tele­work abuse at first meet­ing with Musk, Ramaswamy

EXCLUSIVE: Sen. Joni Ernst is rolling out a pro­pos­al for the Depart­ment of Gov­ern­ment Effi­cien­cy (DOGE) that would reduce gov­ern­ment employ­ee tele­work and sell emp­ty gov­ern­ment office space.

Ernst, R‑Iowa, is the chair of the Sen­ate DOGE Cau­cus and has been work­ing with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy since Pres­i­dent-elect Trump tapped them to lead the new agency. 

Musk and Ramaswamy will vis­it Capi­tol Hill Thurs­day to meet with Repub­li­can law­mak­ers to dis­cuss ways to reduce gov­ern­ment waste. 

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Ernst will roll out her new pro­pos­al and a 60-page report dur­ing her first Sen­ate DOGE Cau­cus meet­ing Thurs­day morn­ing, which Musk and Ramaswamy are expect­ed to attend.

House Speak­er Mike John­son will then hold an event with Musk and Ramaswamy Thurs­day after­noon for all Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors in the House and Sen­ate, which Ernst will attend. 

Ernst has been inves­ti­gat­ing tele­work abuse for two years and based her rec­om­men­da­tions to DOGE on her find­ings. 

First, Ernst pro­pos­es the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment relo­cate Washington’s work­force across the coun­try. Ernst sug­gest­ed leg­is­la­tion that would relo­cate the head­quar­ters of non-secu­ri­ty-relat­ed gov­ern­ment depart­ments and agen­cies out­side Wash­ing­ton to areas with “exist­ing exper­tise for car­ry­ing out the mis­sion and goals of each.” 

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She also pro­posed leg­is­la­tion to relo­cate at least 30% of the employ­ees from Wash­ing­ton, D.C., head­quar­ters of non-secu­ri­ty-relat­ed gov­ern­ment depart­ments and agen­cies to field offices in com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try. 

Ernst also sug­gest­ed that the White House and exec­u­tive branch agen­cies con­sid­er relo­cat­ing some staff, with­out any con­gres­sion­al direc­tive. 

Next, Ernst is propos­ing Con­gress set a goal for all fed­er­al gov­ern­ment agen­cies to achieve a 60% dai­ly occu­pan­cy at their head­quar­ters, while not­ing that, cur­rent­ly, not a sin­gle agency sees even half capac­i­ty occu­pan­cy.

“There are thou­sands of oth­er gov­ern­ment build­ings around the coun­try sit­ting total­ly vacant and unused,” the report states. “Much of this is leased space.

“There is a sim­ple answer,” the report con­tin­ues. “Use it or lose it!” 

Ernst pro­posed that the Gen­er­al Ser­vices Admin­is­tra­tion auc­tion “vacant, unneed­ed, and under­uti­lized build­ings and prop­er­ty with­out unnec­es­sary strings and con­di­tions.” 

She said agen­cies should “imme­di­ate­ly can­cel or allow to expire the $15 mil­lion worth of under­uti­lized leased office space and prop­er­ty.”

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

Accord­ing to the report, main­tain­ing and leas­ing gov­ern­ment office build­ings costs approx­i­mate­ly $8 bil­lion every year, with anoth­er $7.7 bil­lion spent on the ener­gy to keep them up and run­ning. 

Ernst said the gov­ern­ment owns 7,697 vacant build­ings and anoth­er 2,265 that are par­tial­ly emp­ty.

She pro­posed that Con­gress pass a bipar­ti­san bill, the Fed­er­al Assets Sale and Trans­fer Act (FASTA) Reform Act to extend the Pub­lic Build­ings Reform Board’s mis­sion iden­ti­fy­ing unused prop­er­ties for the gov­ern­ment to sell.

She also pro­posed Con­gress pass leg­is­la­tion that requires the “reduc­tion and con­sol­i­da­tion of unused space to ensure all build­ings achieve a uti­liza­tion rate of 60 per­cent or more.” 

Mean­while, Ernst is propos­ing that per­for­mance deter­mine whether a fed­er­al employ­ee may work from home. 

Ernst pro­posed that Con­gress pass near­ly half a dozen bills that would “make tele­work trans­par­ent and account­able.” 

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Ernst also not­ed that fed­er­al employ­ees have been “padding their pay­checks” by claim­ing to be work­ing in areas with high­er pay rates, while actu­al­ly liv­ing else­where. 

“My audits are find­ing as many as 23–68% of tele­work­ing employ­ees for some agen­cies are boost­ing their salaries by receiv­ing incor­rect local­i­ty pay,” she said. “Some employ­ees live more than 2,000 miles away from their office, and one ‘tem­po­rary’ tele­work­er col­lect­ed high­er local­i­ty pay for near­ly a decade.” 

Ernst will intro­duce her pro­pos­al to Musk and Ramaswamy dur­ing Thursday’s meet­ing, after the two said they are large­ly focused on how DOGE could assist in iden­ti­fy­ing waste and reg­u­la­tions that could be elim­i­nat­ed through the exec­u­tive branch. 

Repub­li­cans will con­trol the White House and both cham­bers of the leg­is­la­ture when Pres­i­dent-elect Trump returns to office in Jan­u­ary.