Solar Picnic Tables? How The Federal Government Has Treated Your Tax Dollars With Utter Disdain

The House Oversight Committee’s subpanel on government efficiency held a hearing Tuesday exposing billions of taxpayer dollars wasted annually on outdated federal buildings.

Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who leads the Subcommittee on Delivering Government Efficiency (DOGE), opened the hearing by slamming federal agencies for maintaining a bloated real estate footprint. She pledged to continue pushing to “right-size” the federal government’s real estate portfolio.

“Here in D.C., [the Government Accountability Office] found in 2023 that the vast majority of federal agency headquarters buildings were less than 25% occupied — some much less,” Greene said. “Meanwhile, from 2022 to 2024, the backlog of deferred maintenance on the aging buildings the government owns grew from $216 billion to $370 billion. That’s more than one-third of a trillion dollars it will cost to restore them — if we don’t sell them.”

Under Biden, D.C. crumbled—overgrown lots, vacant offices, wasted cash.

By working with @DOGECommittee, we will ensure that the federal government is not impeding growth.

We will slash federal real estate leases, save billions, and rebuild a capital we can be proud of. pic.twitter.com/Q04mT6WYJd

— Congressman William Timmons (@RepTimmons) April 8, 2025

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has flagged federal property management as a “high-risk” area since 2003. Yet despite two decades of warnings, the Biden administration allowed billions to be spent not only to maintain vacant offices but also on lavish furniture purchases, according to the subcommittee’s review.

Greene highlighted early Trump administration moves, including canceling nearly 700 federal leases totaling 7.9 million square feet of space — moves she said saved taxpayers around $400 million. One such canceled lease was a 15-year, quarter-billion-dollar agreement for luxury office space on Pennsylvania Avenue, signed by the Biden administration to house Voice of America and the U.S. Agency for Global Media. The building, Greene said, had zero broadcasting capabilities, and taxpayers would have been on the hook for another $130 million in renovations.

John Hart, CEO of the watchdog group OpenTheBooks, framed the issue in visceral terms.

“Today’s expansive, excessive and sometimes opulent federal real estate portfolio is both a monument to the administrative state and a mausoleum of lost dreams, opportunity and freedom for American taxpayers,” Hart said in his opening statement. “Do federal employees need seven figures worth of abstract modern art to make the government run?”

Hart testified that agencies spent $4.6 billion on furniture since FY 2021, including $284,000 on FEMA conference rooms and nearly $120,000 on leather recliners for the U.S. embassy in Islamabad. Hart also cited the $238,000 the CDC spent on solar-powered picnic tables which, by the agency’s own social distancing rules, “should have sat unoccupied,” he said.

David Marroni of the GAO echoed the concern over dysfunction and inertia inside the federal property apparatus.

“The pandemic shined a spotlight on these long-standing problems,” Marroni told lawmakers. “The federal government has held on to too much space and has been too slow in shedding underused properties … Progress has been slow. Agencies were in a wait-and-see mode for too long.”

Marroni said that, for the first time, agencies are being forced to begin tracking actual building utilization data starting this summer.

Democrats on the panel said the Trump administration’s rapid disposal plan was ideologically driven and economically reckless.

“I think it’s very clear that part of the agenda here is really about dismantling the administrative state and using real assets of the federal government to do that,” Democratic New Mexico Rep. Melanie Stansbury, the ranking member of the subcommittee, said in the hearing. “The point here is that things are not always as they appear in Washington, D.C., and I think it’s very clear that this is not about the federal taxpayers and the American people. This is about disposing of federal property and a fire sale to make the wealthy more wealthy. Thanks.”

Republicans fired back. Texas Rep. Pat Fallon cited GAO findings that 17 of the 24 largest federal agencies used less than 25% of their office capacity. Republican South Carolina Rep. William Timmons said the goal was to offload waste and inject new life into dead office space. They cited reforms under the Federal Property Management Act and the Federal Assets Sale and Transfer Act of 2016 as a roadmap for future consolidation.

“I guarantee you that a developer — a big bad developer — is going to come in,” Timmons said. “They’ll build this massive building, put housing in it and pay taxes. That’s the highest and best use.”

Greene said the DOGE subcommittee intends to introduce legislation aimed at streamlining the disposal process for surplus federal property and imposing stricter accountability measures for future real estate acquisitions. She also said the subcommittee would work closely with the White House and the GAO to accelerate selloffs and lease terminations.

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