Republican Rep. Beth Van Dyne of Texas appeared on Fox News Thursday and said empty federal buildings waste “billions of dollars” and that firing cannons when no one is around He added that he would not hurt anyone.
Government Accountability Office report A report released on July 13, 2023 found that 75% of office space in federal buildings is unused, and President-elect Donald Trump and Department of Government Efficiency Co-Chair Elon Musk and Vivek・Co-Chairman Ramaswamy announced his intention to have the staff return to office. Van Dine shared his experience with remote workers during the former Trump administration, noting that lax internal requirements caused serious problems. (Related: 'Drain the swamp': Senator proposes bill to evict vast federal bureaucracy from Washington, D.C.)
“I worked at HUD, and they were telecommuting three days a week, and this was long before the coronavirus,” Van Dine said of “Faulkner Focus.” told guest host Julie Banderas. “There were people in the office that I had never met before because I was trying to figure out how to take two days off when they were supposed to be in the office for vacation or an event or something, but literally no one showed up to work. But how can we build a team, not to mention the fact that we're wasting money on leases?”
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“You could shoot up a lot of these federal buildings with cannons and no one would touch them because they’re empty. And yet we have to spend all that money on rent. No,” Van Dine continued. “There's a lot of waste, there's fraud, there's abuse. You start looking at the coronavirus funds and how it was fraudulently accepted and taken away. There's a lot of waste, but defending that waste. I can't imagine there being anyone.”
Several members of Congress have called for limiting or eliminating telecommuting for federal employees, including Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst, who wrote a letter in August 2023 asking 24 government agencies to reconsider the issues associated with telecommuting. Sent. In his letter, Ernst quoted a media outlet. account The story of a military veteran who attended a staff meeting while taking a bubble bath. She then released a 60-page report on December 5 summarizing the findings of her investigation into telework among civil servants.
Previous research by Ernst on telecommuting for federal employees has shown that adjustments to the base pay of federal civilian employees aimed at ensuring that federal employees are compensated on a par with private sector employees in certain areas. The issue of telework related to certain local allowances was clarified in detail. country.
“Why would we spend billions of dollars on leases for vacant buildings? Who does that help?” Van Dine asked. “It doesn't help the American people. Tax dollars continue to be taken away. , tax dollars continue to be diverted from programs that are actually needed to programs that are wasteful.”
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