The days of Ward Cleaver coming home from the office smiling and ready for dinner with his family are gone. Work life is hectic, often hellish. Schedules are insane. Work-life balance is more than a perk. For many, it makes work possible.
Progressive despots like Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, California Governor Gavin Newsom, and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer put a new, autocratic spin on work when they used the COVID pandemic to test the limits of our liberty. Their draconian restrictions on our freedom of movement and association and eagerness to shutter businesses and close schools made working from the living room couch the new normal for those lucky enough to have jobs that required sitting in front of a computer screen.
Workers who performed in person were out of luck.
Telework kept businesses alive and Americans employed. Not only did workers learn they didn’t need an office to do their jobs, shedding the stresses of constant unproductive meetings, annoying coworkers, and horrendous daily commutes were a boon to hard-working employees.
For bad employees, remote work was an opportunity to be worse.
Federal work is a value proposition
Office walls don’t make a bad employee better any more than working from home makes a good worker bad. Pretend you are a business owner. Would you rather have a great, engaged employee sitting on the beach or in a bubble bath with a laptop adding tremendous value or a brain-dead slacker who dutifully arrives at the office at 8:00, dashes out the door at 4:59, and couldn’t escape from a paper bag unless you told them how?
Federal work is no different. It’s a value proposition. Taxpayers deserve what we pay for. That’s all that matters whether work gets done in a government building or on the beach.
DOGE plans will not punish the worst federal workers
Remote work is where the Trump DOGE initiative risks missing the boat. Cutting waste, chopping the fat, and requiring value from our federal workforce is a laudable goal after four years of suffering high level non-performers like airport baggage thief Sam Brinton, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, and do-nothing vice president Kamala Harris, among others.
Can anyone say with a straight face that the in-person work of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and Transportation Secretary “Mayor Pete” Buttigieg made America better? Had they spent their time sitting home in their underwear swilling cocktails and smoking weed instead of appeasing radical progressives the border would still be closed. Laken Riley would still be enjoying her morning run. Our justice system would not have shamed America with Banana Republic weaponization. Lawfare would not be a thing, though in retrospect it helped Trump regain the White House.
Cost-cutting for its own sake saves taxpayers money, but the focus should be on value. Punishing workers for not being in federal buildings that cost a phenomenal amount of money is not about getting more value from federal work. It’s about a government that doesn’t work.
Those demanding that federal employees return to the office lament the unused space that wastes billions. The Government Accountability Office reported that leasing office buildings costs federal agencies $5 billion annually,2 but unused space was a problem long before pandemic-era remote work:
Even before the pandemic shifted the balance between in-office and remote work, federal agencies struggled to identify and let go of unneeded space. Operating unused space has unnecessary financial and environmental costs—one reason federal property management has been on our High Risk List since 2003.
We found that 17 agencies’ headquarters buildings were at 25% capacity or less in the first 3 months of 2023. But Office of Management and Budget officials said they haven’t developed benchmarks for measuring building use that account for increases in telework.3
Putting bodies in buildings to justify exorbitant leasing costs does not add value. It’s robbing Peter to pay Paul. Dumping the buildings and embracing remote work by good employees who work hard and generate value for our country makes more sense.
Of course, that presumes good federal workers dedicated to America’s taxpayers. No matter what DOGE plans to do, the worst federal workers will be spared.
Beaches, bubble baths, and a do-nothing Congress that points fingers
I’m not sure why remote work angers well-compensated conservative politicians and right-wing media pundits who embrace the delusion that physical presence equates to worker productivity. If you have to lord over your workers to force them to do their jobs, they aren’t worth their paychecks.
Will Comer account for the time he wasted on our dime?
House Oversight and Accountability Chair James Comer (R-TN) wasted countless hours while attracting as much media attention as possible with his “Biden Crime Family” hearings. His efforts went nowhere. Now Hunter has been pardoned. Joe will leave office unimpeached, unindicted, unaccountable, and unscathed. Comer moved on:
During this Congress, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability has investigated the Biden-Harris Administration’s continuation of pandemic-era telework policies. President Biden’s policies have prioritized the interests of federal employee unions over those of the American people.5
Our interests are also invested in the congressman and his House and Senate colleagues. Hearings and investigations that accomplish nothing except the kind of self-promotion that builds political careers offers no value to Americans paying for self-interested PR instead of results.
Ernst promises squeals, but she’s not talking about members of Congress
Senate DOGE Caucus Chair Joni Ernest (R-IA) vows to ‘Make ‘Em Squeal,’ a threat guaranteed to elicit pushback from Democrats. The senator trumpeted her accomplishments while threatening government workers:
During her time in Congress, Ernst pressed on a number of priorities now highlighted by Musk and Ramaswamy, including targeting the wave of government workers who continue to benefit from COVID-19 remote work policies. She recently promised to give DOGE a ‘roadmap’ to get ‘85% of the federal workforce’ back in the office.6
Pressing on priorities doesn’t deliver value. Instead, Ernst’s Out of Office Bureaucrats on the Beach and in bubble baths but not in office buildings demands value from other federal workers. While it’s true that we can’t tolerate bureaucrats who play golf, run companies, and commit crimes while they are on America’s payroll, requiring office attendance does not guarantee results. It just puts bad employees in an office we probably pay too much for.
The senator allows some leeway for remote work and argues in favor of dumping unnecessary federal office space while warning:
If bureaucrats don’t want to return to work, make their wish come true.7
Her headline-grabbing remark doesn’t address the concomitant failure of Congressional lawmakers to add value whether or not they are in session. Will that change with Trump and the GOP’s razor-thin majorities? History offers little guidance for optimism.
DOGE should hold arrogant lawmakers to the same standard as federal workers
DOGE plans to make the federal workforce accountable should be celebrated. However, members of Congress should be held to the same standard. We’re still waiting for effective insider trading legislation. Pork and earmarks continue to sneak into bloated spending bills. Term limits are important talking points during elections, but even Dianne Feinstein’s too-late exit from the Senate failed to generate any urgency to get this done.
For four years Congress failed to address the issues Americans care about like the border invasion, the out-of-control federal budget, and Biden-Harris inflation that ravages family budgets and prevents home ownership. Members are adept at placing themselves in the spotlight, but PR spots and inflammatory press releases don’t generate value any more than swilling cocktails on the beach instead of working gives taxpayers value for their money.
If congressional lawmakers like Ernst and Comer are to have any credibility while they demand accountability from rank-and-file federal workers and low-level bureaucrats they should also take a good look at their fellow legislators. We the people already have. It’s no big secret that our House and Senate protect some of the worst federal workers of all.Sources
1Federal Real Property: Agencies Need New Benchmarks to Measure and Shed Underutilized Space.” U.S Government Accountability Office. October 26, 2023. https://www.gao.gov/assets/extracts/6ec543df9efb73de36f2f1f40cc8e4cc/FastFacts_5-107006_PI_jo.png, retrieved December 7, 2024.
2Federal Real Property: Agencies Need New Benchmarks to Measure and Shed Underutilized Space.” U.S Government Accountability Office. October 26, 2023. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-107006, retrieved December 7, 2024.
https://www.gao.gov/assets/extracts/6ec543df9efb73de36f2f1f40cc8e4cc/FastFacts_5-107006_PI_jo.png
3“FEDERAL REAL PROPERTY. Preliminary Results Show Federal Buildings Remains Underutilized Due to Longstanding Challenges and Increased Telework.” U.S. Government Accountability Office. July 13, 2023. p. 2. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-23-106200, retrieved December 7, 2024.
4“Merrifield, Virginia: U.S. Postal workers operating sorting machines wear earphones tuned to the music of their choice to relieve the monotony and noise of their work and machines.” George J. Szabo, ca. 1973. National Archives, Records of the U.S. Information Agency (306-PSE-73-1538). https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/way-we-worked/assets/img/4.22.jpg, retrieved December 7, 2024.
5“Comer and Greene Demand Biden Administration Stop Signing New Labor Deals That Entrench the Federal Bureaucracy.” Committee on Oversight and Accountability. December 6, 2024. https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-and-greene-demand-biden-administration-stop-signing-new-labor-deals-that-entrench-the-federal-bureaucracy/, retrieved December 8, 2024.
6“Ernst on DOGE Caucus: “My Promise Was to ‘Make ‘Em Squeal’” Joni Ernst. November 24, 2024. https://www.ernst.senate.gov/news/press-releases/ernst-on-doge-caucus-my-promise-was-to-make-em-squeal, retrieved December 7, 2024.
7“Out of Office. Bureaucrats on the beach and in bubble baths but not in office buildings.” Fox News. p. 3. https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/12/final-telework-report_cmyk-1.pdf, retrieved December 7, 2024.
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