“We found that 17 agencies' headquarters buildings were at 25% capacity or less in the first 3 months of 2023,” a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) says.
The report shows that Americans are paying billions in tax dollars for nearly empty buildings - a problem that was already on the rise before COVID-19 pushed the “work from home” mindset.
According to the GAO report:
Federal agencies have long struggled to determine how much office space they need to fulfill their missions. Retaining excess and underutilized space is one of the main reasons that federal real property management has remained on GAO's High-Risk List since 2003. Seventeen of the 24 federal agencies in the Federal Real Property Council used an estimated average 25 percent or less of their headquarters building's capacity for 1 week in each of January, February, and March of 2023. Agencies at the higher end of the range, used an estimated 40 to 49 percent of the capacity of their headquarters on average during these weeks.
The report explains that it costs “$2 billion a year to operate and maintain owned federal office buildings” and that “Federal agencies spend about $5 billion annually to lease office space from the private sector and from the federal government.”
Of course, big government leftists always want to spend more. The Senate Committee on Finance has noted that the Biden Budget calls for nearly $5 trillion in new and increased taxes. I bet Joe feels there's plenty of space available for it.
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Columbia donor bashes Ivy League students for their support of the anti-Jewish Hamas terrorists.
— MRCTV (@mrctv) November 1, 2023
These students are supposed to be America's academic elites. pic.twitter.com/9YilAPe4Lf