Comer calls out Biden’s ‘failure’ to get federal employees back in office, vows to do so
Comer promises to put federal employees back to work
Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer made scathing remarks at the first hearing of the 119th Congress, criticizing the Biden administration’s handling of the telecommuting policy for federal employees.
Chairman of the supervisory board Tail. James Comer, R-Ky.doesn’t play around when it comes to getting federal employees back in office. In the first committee hearing of the 119th Congress, Comer made remarks criticizing the Biden administration’s “failure” to bring federal employees back to office.
“When President Trump’s team gets into federal agency headquarters in and around D.C., they’re going to find them mostly empty. That’s because of the failure of the Biden administration to end telecommuting and bring federal employees back to the office,” Comer said.
Although the end of President Biden’s term is still a few days away, Washington is preparing for change ahead of President-elect Trump’s return to DC. According to the Oversight Committee report, which cited “the Biden-Harris administration’s own data,” as of May 2024, 1,057,000 federal employees eligible to telecommute were in the office three times a week, and another 228,000 telecommuters “never he doesn’t come to the office at all.”
A woman works at a desktop computer in a home office in Bern, Switzerland, 2020. (Stefan Wermuth/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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The report, titled “The Lights Are On, But Everyone’s Home: Why the New Administration Will Move Into Mostly Empty Federal Agency Offices,” is 41 pages long and was prepared by Republicans on the committee. In its report, the committee argued that telecommuting policies were “harmful” to government agencies.
During the hearing, Comer pointed the finger at Democrats, particularly Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-Ny. He attacked Schumer for allegedly allowing the Show Up Act to “gather dust.” The bill would return the remote work of federal employees to “pre-pandemic levels.”
Rep. James Comer, left, and President Joe Biden. (Getty Images)
“The Government Accountability Office found that 17 of the 24 largest federal agency headquarters in the DC area were less than 25% occupied, some well below 25% occupied. A separate study by the Public Buildings Reform Committee found that occupancy rates were only half at 12%, 12% occupancy,” said Comer at the hearing. “Taxpayers’ money is wasted on the lease and maintenance of this expensive, empty business premises.”
The commission wrote in its report that Trump is inheriting a “largely absent workforce,” blaming an “ingrained” telecommuting policy. the Biden administration.
Comer also noted that the telecommuting policy for federal workers has resulted in a “lack of foot traffic” that is “economically disastrous” for D.C., something Mayor Muriel Bowser also pointed out. Bowser has been “begging the White House to change” the telecommuting policy for nearly two years.
In fact, the Democratic lawmaker met with President-elect Trump to discuss what could be done with “underutilized federal buildings” around the city.
Bowser expressed optimism after the Dec. 30 meeting, saying that both she and Trump “want Washington, DC, to be the best, most beautiful city in the world, and we want the capital to reflect the strength of our nation.”
Shot of a young woman using a laptop and reviewing paperwork while working from home. (iStock)
The committee’s report acknowledges that Trump “called for massive telecommuting and telecommuting” at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and added that he “quickly sought the return of federal employees to their offices to provide services to the American people when it became clear that widespread, indiscriminate closures were not the right social response to the pandemic.”
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Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
