The administrative state indulged in $4.6 billion on new furniture since October 2020 — a "long-standing" issue — despite nearly half of all federal employees working remotely, the president of a watchdog group told a House Oversight subcommittee on Tuesday.
"Every family can relate to the cost of furniture. That's why taxpayers are so incensed when they learn that federal agencies are freely spending billions of dollars every year on high-end pieces," OpenTheBooks CEO John Hart told members of the Delivering on Government Efficiency Subcommittee.
"Since fiscal year 2021, executive agencies have spent more than $4.6 billion on furniture alone. That amount could buy 9.2 million American families a modest $500 kitchen table."
In January, the House Oversight Committee released a report detailing that as "of May 2024, more than half of federal employees were either teleworking regularly or fully remote."
OpenTheBooks told the New York Post on Tuesday that the U.S. Agency for International Development spent $4 million on furniture for offices in Ukraine, West Africa, and Mozambique, where the CIA front agency decked out the office with $250,000 worth of pricey Herman Miller chairs.
During his testimony, Hart said the State Department spent $1.4 million on art and drawings to decorate its embassies around the world. One such purchase of $200,000 included two paintings from modern abstract artist Alfred Jensen.
"Our embassy in Islamabad," Hart said of Pakistan, "is a place where you can put your feet up thanks to 40 Ethan Allen chairs, which cost taxpayers $120,000.
"All in all, we have an incomprehensible amount of physical space and furnishings — too much of it inefficiently procured, leased, and maintained," the watchdog president concluded.
In October 2023, OpenTheBooks gave a first look at the government's furnishing of empty office spaces.
According to the Post, the agency that ranked highest for furniture spending was the Department of Defense at $1.63 billion, followed by Veterans Affairs at $590.4 million, the Department of Justice at $555.5 million, the State Department at $508.5 million, and the General Services Administration at $552.8 million.
Chair Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said during the hearing, "Federal agencies shouldn't be maintaining empires at taxpayers' expense."
Ranking Member Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M., called the issue of vacant office space "a long-standing" one that she hopes will gain "bipartisan" traction to better "address the needs of this country."
"We have been deeply concerned that the entire DOGE [the Department of Government Efficiency] effort has been a front to help support billionaires who are trying to privatize public services," she said.
Hart said, "Today's expansive, excessive and sometimes opulent federal real estate portfolio is both a monument to the federal administrative state and a mausoleum of lost dreams, opportunity, and freedom for American taxpayers. Every dollar saved in Washington is a dream realized somewhere else in America."
David Marroni, acting director of physical infrastructure at the Government Accountability Office, and Ron Kendall, the executive chair emeritus of the National Federal Development Association, also testified in Tuesday's hearing.
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