Comer Opens First Hearing of the 119th Congress on the Biden Administration’s Efforts to Cement a Stay-at-Home Federal Workforce
WASHINGTON—House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) delivered remarks today at a hearing on “The Stay-at-Home Federal Workforce: Another Biden-Harris Legacy.” Chairman Comer reminded Americans of President Trump’s promise to reverse the Biden Administration’s harmful telework policies and return federal employees to in-person work when he takes office next week. In a new report released by the Oversight Committee on Wednesday morning, the Biden Administration’s efforts to work with Democrat-backed federal labor unions to cement the stay-at-home federal workforce were exposed. Chairman Comer details the findings of this report, explains how evidence uncovered by the Committee proves telework is harmful to federal agency performance, and describes how President Biden and his team failed to properly track telework data. To conclude his remarks, Chairman Comer emphasizes that the American people deserve a federal workforce that shows up for them and operates at the highest standard. During the 119th Congress, the Oversight Committee is committed to working with President Trump to return federal government employees to the office.
Below are Chairman Comer’s remarks as prepared for delivery.
Good morning. Welcome to this Committee’s first hearing of the 119th Congress.
I welcome our new Members. And I welcome the Gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Connolly, in his new role as Ranking Member of the full committee. I look forward to working with you.
In five days, President Trump will take the oath of office and become the 47th President of the United States.
President Trump is going to change the way Washington works and will bring accountability to the unelected federal bureaucracy.
This includes ensuring the federal workforce is held accountable to the American people and ensuring they show up to the office for work.
When President Trump’s team enters federal agency office headquarters in and around Washington, D.C., they’ll find them to be mostly empty. That’s due to the Biden Administration’s failure to end pandemic-era telework and bring federal employees back to the office.
The COVID-19 pandemic is long over. And it has been nearly two years since the House passed the SHOW UP Act—our bill to return federal employee telework to pre-pandemic levels, which only collected dust on Senator Schumer’s desk last Congress.
Yet, we all see the situation in downtown Washington.
The Government Accountability Office found that 17 of the largest 24 federal agency headquarters in the DC-area were less than 25 percent occupied. Some much less.
A separate study by the Public Buildings Reform Board determined occupancy rates were just half that, at 12 percent.
The federal government is the largest employer and office space occupant in D.C. Taxpayer money is being wasted to lease and maintain all that expensive, empty space. The resulting lack of foot traffic in the city is also economically devastating for the District, as D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has testified.
To be clear, since the height of the pandemic, much of the federal workforce has gotten up and gone to work every day. This, for example, includes those working in veterans hospitals, patrolling the border, and performing other law enforcement functions.
But the Biden Administration’s own data shows that the vast majority of federal office workers around the nation remain at home—either some, most, or all of the time.
In fact, nearly 228,000 federal employees work entirely from home. The majority of the Department of Education’s staff now consists of remote employees who never come into the office.
And that’s just the official data. In our telework investigation, we learned that most agencies haven’t been effectively tracking when employees are in the office.
In the Biden-Harris Administration, the example was set from the top. This Committee heard testimony last Congress from the former head of the General Services Administration, who worked remotely from Missouri while GSA maintained a virtually empty headquarters building in downtown DC. GSA is of course the agency in charge of federal real estate management.
We also heard from the former head of the Biden-Harris Office of Personnel Management. Under oath, she repeatedly told Members she didn’t know how many DC-area employees were going to their office. OPM is of course the agency in charge of government-wide telework.
Throughout our investigation of federal telework—and despite repeated hearings at both the Full Committee as well as the Subcommittee level led by Congressman Pete Sessions—Biden-Harris appointees failed to provide requested data about agency telework. They don’t know the impact massive telework has had on agency mission achievement, or citizen services.
We do know that agencies have been plagued by poor performance. The Social Security Administration, for instance, has a record backlog of initial disability claims. There are long wait times at SSA field offices. Some of our constituents wait a half hour or longer to get their calls taken. It can take even longer for walk-ins to get seen in a field office.
Yet nearly all SSA employees telework. A lot. In fact, they work from home more often than not, per the Administration’s own data.
We’ll hear today from Martin O’Malley, who left his job as SSA Commissioner late last November. Before doing so, he signed an agreement extending over 40,000 SSA union members’ telework arrangement through October 2029. That’s through the Trump Administration—and beyond.
And his is not the only agency that inked a long-term telework deal for employees in the past year.
How is this good for democracy? The voters just delivered President Trump an electoral mandate to run the executive branch. Should union contracts designed to tie his hands take precedence over that mandate?
What adds insult to injury is that the American Federation of Government Employees union, which fought to make telework an entitlement at Social Security and other agencies, is now recalling its own staff to union headquarters.
An AFGE spokesman told the Washington Post recently that the employees have to come back this month, “to ensure that the staff is fully prepared to tackle an onslaught of Trump policies targeting the federal workforce.”
The union’s message couldn’t be clearer: For those doing the people’s business in a federal job, showing up should be optional. Those charged with blunting the Trump agenda, however, need to be on their A-game. And that requires showing up in person.
Well, I for one want federal employees to also be on their A-game. And so do the American people. Federal workers must SHOW UP for them.
I look forward to working with the Trump Administration in getting federal employees back to work.
With that, I yield to the Ranking Member for his opening statement.
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