Ernst’s First Bills of New Congress Drain the Swamp

WASHINGTON – In the first week of the 119^th Congress, U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) took action on her leading priority of putting taxpayers first by introducing a trio of bills to reform Washington by relocating federal agency headquarters and workers across the country and closer to the people they serve.

After a decade of exposing waste, fraud, and abuse through her “Squeal Awards,” Senate DOGE Caucus Chair Ernst has focused her latest efforts on reforming the federal workforce after her report in December 2024 on telework abuse exposed a chronically absent bureaucrat class.

“It is week one of Republican control in Congress, and I am already working hard on my top priorities – to drain the swamp, save tax dollars, and get federal employees back to serving the American people,” said Ernst. “While DOGE stands ready to clean house, I will be leading the fight in the Senate to disrupt the business-as-usual bureaucrats who spent the last four years out of office. The federal workforce has shown they clearly don’t want to work in D.C., and I am going to make their dreams come true.”

Ernst’s package of bills to save taxpayer dollars includes:

• The DRAIN THE SWAMP Act that relocates at least 30% of D.C. headquarters to the states and requires reduction of federal real estate in D.C. by at least 30%;
• The REMOTE Act that creates accountability by requiring agencies to track and report computer usage for teleworking and in-office employees; and
• The SWAMP Act that relocates non-security federal headquarters outside D.C. and across the states.

Background:

In August 2023, Ernst demanded investigations into 24 federal departments and agencies to determine the impact of telework on the delivery and response times of services.

Her advocacy led to the General Services Administration (GSA) downsizing 3.5 million square feet of federal buildings, saving taxpayers over $1 billion in November 2023. A year later in December 2024, after Ernst’s urging, GSA announced it would downsize another 1.5 million square feet of office space, saving taxpayers another $475 million.

In December 2023, Ernst exposed that, almost four years after COVID-19 temporarily closed federal buildings, not a single government agency is occupying even half their office space and called on Biden’s bureaucrats to deck the agency halls with federal workers or sell off unused facilities.

Her latest telework report revealed that 90% of federal employees eligible for telework do so, 23-68% of federal employees sampled are being overpaid by receiving incorrect locality pay, and not a single agency headquarters in Washington was even half-full, with the average occupancy at 12%.

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