The government has wasted $10 billion maintaining, leasing, and furnishing empty buildings, according to Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) annual Festivus waste report.
This year, Paul is highlighting over $1 trillion in government waste, which includes “ice-skating drag queens, a $12 Million Las Vegas pickleball complex, $4,840,082 on Ukrainian influencers, and more!”
“No matter how much money the government has wasted, politicians keep demanding even more,” he wrote.
Coinciding with this year’s report is the rising popularity of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the overall desire to slash government waste. One of the major areas of waste identified the report is fairly simple: The government must stop spending $10 billion on empty buildings.
“The federal government spent $10 billion on maintaining, leasing, and furnishing almost entirely empty buildings,” it reads, pointing out that “most federal offices are ghost towns, with 17 out of 24 agencies using only 25% or less of their space in 2023.”
“Even the busiest offices barely reach 50% capacity,” it continues, noting that the coronavirus worsened this problem as countless workers went remote. But, Paul argues, this was a problem before then, too:
The GAO calculated building capacity based on usable square feet per employee. It found that many of these buildings are just oversized, expensive storage units for empty desks. In addition to the whopping $2 billion annual maintenance cost, the federal government is spending $5 billion on leases.
Paul also highlighted the government’s waste on commodities, such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) installing solar-powered picnic tables for $237,960.
“I was a one-man @DOGE before @DOGE was a gleam in the eyes of amped-up tech executives, and new media barons got behind the idea,” Paul noted.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m VERY happy they’re here. I passed along 2,000 pages of waste to @ElonMusk and @VivekGRamaswamy in the interest of curbing government waste. Now, they don’t have to work too hard to find what I’ve already found,” he added.
Read the full report here.
