Report Shows 94% of Federal Bureaucrats Don’t Come Into the Office Full Time

U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) published a damning report entitled “Out of Office” on Thursday, investigating the excesses and inefficiencies of the federal bureaucrats working from home since they were transitioned out of the office during COVID.

Sen. Ernst found, based on cell phone data, that only six percent of federal workers come into the office full-time, and roughly 33 percent never come to the office at all.

“Bureaucrats have been found in a bubble bath, on the golf course, running their own business, and even getting busted doing crime while on taxpayers’ time. Members of President Biden’s own cabinet claimed to be on the clock while being out of office and unreachable,” said Ernst in her report.

The work dynamic of federal employees has shifted drastically since the pre-COVID days, when only three percent of federal bureaucrats worked from home. Unlike much of corporate America, government employees have been notoriously slow to return to a regular work routine.

Ernst penned the report in her capacity as the head of the newly founded Congressional DOGE Caucus, intended to help Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy dismantle the federal bureaucracy with their Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

The report blames slow response times from public servants and poor services on the widespread absence of employees from federal offices.

“Thousands of calls from veterans seeking mental health care go unanswered. Remote work may be partly responsible for the recent baby formula crisis. Small businesses, students, and other taxpayers seeking assistance are instead getting sent to voicemail,” she said.

She claimed that some workers are exploiting the system by technically working in an office in an area with a higher pay rate while actually living and working from home in a lower-pay area. That is, earning a Washington, D.C.-salary while living in a much more affordable part of the country.

Some workers are reportedly living as far as 2,000 miles away from where they allegedly work.

Ernst brought to the attention of DOGE the wasted taxpayer dollars caused by vacant or nearly empty offices.

According to the report, the government spends $8 billion every year on maintaining and leasing government offices, and $7.7 billion on energy costs to keep the buildings electrified, cooled, heated, and supplied with water.

Ernst found that not a single important government office or headquarters in Washington, D.C. is even at half occupancy, and that government buildings have a meager average occupancy rate of just 12 percent.

The fderal government reportedly wastes taxpayer money on 7,697 vacant buildings.

“Use it or lose it! If bureaucrats won’t show up to work, let’s end the leases, sell the buildings, and consolidate office space,” said Ernst n an X post.

The current system makes things easy for bureaucrats hoping to continue earning a taxpayer-funded salary — along with the Gold Standard benefits package and eventual pension government employee get — without actually working a full schedule.

The report provided the example of an IRS employee who routinely played golf while allegedly working and collecting his salary. He was able to continue golfing while on the clock for ten years before he was found out and fired.

One manager in charge of scheduling appointments for veterans posted an image of himself on social media attending an online meeting from a bathtub.

Another federal employee was reportedly drinking and driving while on the clock, which was not considered grounds for termination. That person continued as a federal employee until she was fired amid accusations that she embezzled $20,000.

Ernst made a series of proposals to mitigate the harm done to taxpayers by the current work-from-home ethos of bureaucrats.

She suggested that the government should auction off its vacant buildings and let leases expire on unused space.

She wants the government to consolidate offices to potentially save billions in taxpayer money every year, instead of forcing them to pay for excess office space.

Ernst also wants to relocate much of the federal bureaucracy out of Washington, D.C., to bring civil servants closer to the public they ostensibly serve.

For many years, the area around Washington, D.C. has seen the highest concentration of wealthy individuals and families in America.

Under her proposal, government workers would only be allowed to work from home if their performance didn’t suffer, and it was recommended that federal employers track their locations and productivity using VPNs and by monitoring network traffic.