Alright, I'm not going to just use my platform here to attack work from home. As a work from homer myself, I love it.
What I don't love is having a government so large and a deep state so expansive that we have large taxpayer funded federal buildings just going to waste all across the country.
This is insanity:
Only 6 in 100 federal workers are showing up to the office on a full time basis. That's such an insanely low number.
A paltry 6% of the federal workforce 'report in-person on a full-time basis' while almost one-third of federal workers are remote on a full-time basis, in a sharp turn-around from the pre-pandemic era in which only 3% teleworked daily, a report from Sen. Joni Ernst's (R-Iowa) office found.
Ernst, who has long crusaded against the rise in remote federal work, is planning to reveal the fruits of her office's year-and-a-half inquiry to Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) co-heads Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy during their visit to the Capitol Thursday.
I want a sleek government. Small enough to be put into your pocket. Close enough to kick, as Chesterton put it. I want 94% of the government to be fired anyways, generously, so why not start here?
'The nation's capital is a ghost town, with government buildings averaging an occupancy rate of 12[%],' Ernst wrote in the blistering report. 'If federal employees can't be found at their desks, exactly where are they?'
They're at home, Senator Ernst. The real question is whether or not they're working while they're at home. Because our taxpayer checks sure are clearing for them either way.
Elon Musk, the man in charge of paring down the size of the swamp, has even more insight into this number.
So ... a sizable majority of government workers who are showing up to the office are ... the janitors and security. Securing and cleaning a mostly empty building.
Again, if all of this work is done from home, leaving aside online security issues, why are we paying for these buildings? What's the benefit to the taxpayer?
Meanwhile, the government has ownership of about 7,697 vacant buildings and 2,265 that are somewhat empty, costing about $15 million for leasing and maintenance of underutilized space, according to her report.
Our public servants are also, according to this report, greatly ripping off the American people in particularly subversive ways.
It's tough to track down, but anywhere from 23-68% of federal employees are scamming taxpayers by collecting pay based on where their office is and not based on where they work.
Government pay is allocated based on cost of living in the area, so many public servants might have offices in the DC area, for instance, but live and work in a much more affordable area while collecting a premium for DC work.
'My audits are finding as many as 23[%] to 68[%] of teleworking employees for some agencies are boosting their salaries by receiving incorrect locality pay,' her report found. 'Some employees live more than 2,000 miles away from their office and one ‘temporary' teleworker collected higher locality pay for nearly a decade.'
Over 25% of federal teleworkers on a daily basis live over 50 miles away from the workplace, a US Office of Personnel Management found.
Get paid for big city expenses, live in the cheap suburbs, pocket the difference. That seems to be the name of the game in the deep state.
There is A LOT of work to be done to drain the swamp, and this report is just the tip of the iceberg.
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