At a House DOGE Committee hearing before the Congressional recess, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) spoke about office space leased by the federal government.
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00:00The gentleman yields. I now recognize Mr. Burchett from Tennessee.
00:05Thank you, Chair Lady. Thank you for indulgence in allowing me to be on this committee.
00:09I come in here usually ticked off and I leave in worse condition, so thank you for that.
00:16If I ever have a counselor, I'm going to send you the bill.
00:21Mr. Hart, do any members of Congress, their spouses, or their immediate family
00:27have any property ownership rights to this property or any federal land?
00:34Congressman, I don't know the answer to that question off the top of my head.
00:37Okay, do spouses of members of Congress own real property and lease it to the federal government?
00:42And how would we find that out? Because I think I know what you're going to say.
00:46I believe the answer to that question is yes.
00:49You do?
00:50I do believe that.
00:52Is there any way we could verify that information?
00:54Well, you go to USA Spending and search, open the books, our website,
00:59and you can look up members' names, you can look up any person's name,
01:03and find that information.
01:05All right. I suspect that's being done as I speak.
01:09Mr. Moroney, how much underutilized space does the federal government have?
01:15Can't say there's not good data. We just don't have data.
01:18It's going to come this summer. Congress has now required it.
01:20But prior to this, once you get outside of headquarters, there wasn't measurement of how much the...
01:25I hate these studies.
01:26Every day we vote on a new study, and I suspect there's some warehouse like in Raiders of the Lost Ark at the end
01:31where they're putting this, and our top people are looking at it,
01:34and there's these studies that are just on these shelves in these vast, vast warehouses.
01:39Would you agree with that assumption?
01:40There are a lot of studies.
01:42All right.
01:43Remember your... whatever.
01:44All right.
01:45How much would the federal government save by allowing unneeded leases to expire?
01:51Federal government sends about $6 billion on leased office space,
01:55so depending on how many you let expire, you get substantial savings.
02:00As I said up here, people chastised the thought of making a profit.
02:07To me, that's not an evil thing.
02:09That allows for more people to be employed.
02:11It seems that we have forgotten exactly who we work for,
02:17and it's the people back home who are struggling.
02:19When I was mayor of Knox County, one of the first things I did was I said,
02:23get me a list of all the property we own in Knox County.
02:28And it was amazing to me.
02:31I mean, we had property in neighborhoods.
02:34We had property...
02:34Some of it was obviously undevelopable.
02:37Someone was on the corner of a small airport.
02:39But it was all over.
02:42We had something listed as a park, and it was nothing further from a park.
02:47And we ended up selling a lot of this property, and we paid cash for schools,
02:52crazy things like that.
02:53We didn't stay in debt.
02:55And to me, that just seems like the model that the federal government should adopt.
03:00We should have a listing of the property,
03:02and the people ought to be able to review that and make better assumptions.
03:06Because I assume, I think they're a lot more smarter than we give them credit for.
03:11And I suspect that's part of the problem.
03:13They don't want to let them look behind the curtain, so to speak.
03:19Would you agree with that?
03:20It is important to have that kind of data.
03:22There is an inventory that's available online,
03:25but there are significant issues with this reliability.
03:29Mr. Hart, would you care to address that?
03:32We would like to enhance the transparency of all of that data.
03:35I think it's one of the most important assets that taxpayers should be able to review the cost
03:40so that they can make good decisions.
03:41And again, the purpose of transparency is to empower taxpayers.
03:45Transparency is not a two-way street.
03:48The government does not have the right to inspect our checkbook.
03:50Taxpayers do have the right to inspect the government's checkbook
03:53because it's their money.
03:56Mr. Kendall, would you care to offer your...
03:59I'm all in favor of transparency.
04:02No objection.
04:03It seems our friends in the media always strive for that.
04:08And we get pretty gutless up here.
04:13So I would hope in the future we would address that.
04:16I'll yield my 49 seconds back to you, Chair Lady.
04:19Thank you for your indulgence, ma'am.