Comer calls out Biden’s ‘failure’ to get federal employees to return to the office, vows to get it done

Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., isn’t playing around when it comes to bringing federal employees back to the office. In the committee’s first hearing of the 119th Congress, Comer delivered remarks slamming the Biden administration’s ‘failure’ to get federal employees back to the office.

‘When President Trump’s team enters federal agency headquarters in and around DC, they’ll find them to be mostly empty. That’s due to the Biden administration’s failure to end telework and to bring federal employees back to the office,’ Comer said.

While there are still a few days left in President Biden’s term, Washington is preparing itself for a shift ahead of President-elect Trump’s return to DC. According to the Oversight Committee’s report, which cites ‘the Biden-Harris Administration’s own data,’ as of May 2024, 1,057,000 telework-eligible federal employees were in-office three times a week, and another 228,000 remote employees ‘never come to the office at all.’

The report, titled ‘The lights are on, but everyone is at home: Why the new administration will enter largely vacant federal agency offices,’ is 41 pages and was prepared by Republicans on the committee. In its report, the committee makes the case that telework policies have been ‘detrimental’ to government agencies.

In the hearing, Comer pointed the finger at Democrats, in particular, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-Ny. He slammed Schumer for allegedly letting the Show Up Act ‘collect dust.’ The legislation would bring federal employees’ telework back to ‘pre-pandemic levels.’

‘The Government Accountability Office found that 17 of the largest 24 federal agency headquarters in the DC area were less than 25% occupied, some much less than 25% occupied. A separate study by the Public Buildings Reform Board found that occupancy rates were just half that at 12%, 12% occupancy,’ Comer said at the hearing. ‘Taxpayer money is being wasted to lease and maintain all that expensive, empty office space.’

The committee writes in its report that Trump is inheriting ‘a largely absentee workforce,’ blaming it on the telework policies ‘entrenched’ by the Biden administration.

Comer also noted that the telework policy for federal workers has resulted in a ‘lack of foot traffic’ that is ‘economically devastating’ for DC, something Mayor Muriel Bowser has also pointed out. Bowser has been ‘imploring the White House to change’ the telework policy for nearly two years.

In fact, the Democrat lawmaker met with President-elect Trump to discuss what could be done with the ‘underutilized federal buildings’ around the city.

Bowser expressed optimism after the Dec. 30 meeting, saying both she and Trump ‘want Washington, DC to be the best, most beautiful city in the world and we want the capital city to reflect the strength of our nation.’

The committee’s report acknowledges that Trump ‘invoked massive telework and remote work’ at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and adds that he ‘quickly sought to return federal employees to their offices to deliver for the American people when it became clear that widespread, indiscriminate lockdowns were not the right societal answer to the pandemic.’

Brooke Singman contributed to this report.