Trump Administration Moves to Slash Federal Building Space. How Much Could That Save Taxpayers?

Taxpayers are stuck paying more than $81 million per year for the maintenance or leasing of about 10,000 federal buildings sitting vacant or underused. 

The Trump administration is moving to reverse that trend by following up on proposals by Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, the chair of the Senate DOGE Caucus. The caucus is pushing a legislative agenda to support the White House Department of Government Efficiency to cut government waste.

“I had been noticing all of these empty buildings, and so we had exposed that. We’ve talked about it for years,” Ernst told The Daily Signal.

Now the Trump administration’s General Services Administration, the federal procurement agency, has put more than 40 federal properties up for sale across the country since last March. 

In June, Ernst introduced the Federal Office Realignment and Sale of Assets for Leveraging Efficiency Act, or the FOR SALE Act. The bill specifies six properties to be auctioned off. It projects the sale of these properties would net about $400 million in revenue.

While the bill has not yet passed, the Trump administration moved to sell two of the six properties it suggested auctioning off. The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced it will be vacating its old headquarters, the 1.1 million-square-foot Robert C. Weaver Building. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Agriculture will be leaving its 2.2 million-square-foot South Building in Washington.

“We have a lot of underutilized buildings, and because we have highlighted that issue, the USDA and HUD decided to go ahead and consolidate some of their work situations, and they have vacated some of the buildings,” Ernst said. “And we know that there are more agencies that will plan to do that very soon as well.”

The federal government has 7,697 federal buildings that are vacant, while another 2,265 are partially empty or underutilized, according to a 2022 Congressional Research Service report.  

The government has a total of 23.28 million square feet of underused office space it owns with annual operating and maintenance costs of $67.1 million, according to an August 2024 report from the Office of Management and Budget. 

It has another 766,000 square feet of underused leased space with an annual lease cost of $13.6 million and annual operating and maintenance costs of $481,000. That brings the total annual cost for all of these properties to $81.3 million, according to the Office of Management and Budget report. 

The other buildings that the Ernst FOR SALE Act calls for auctioning off are the 1 million-square-foot Hubert H. Humphrey Federal Building, which houses the Department of Health and Human Services; the 1.8 million-square-foot Frances Perkins Federal Building for the Department of Labor; the 1.8 million-square-foot James V. Forrestal Building for the Department of Energy; and the 810,834-square-foot Theodore Roosevelt Federal Building that houses the Office of Personnel Management. The measurements are according to the federal Public Building Reform Board.

Prior to the Ernst legislation, the Senate DOGE Caucus also counted it as a win when the Trump administration moved to sell off the 12 million-square-foot Wilbur J. Cohen Building that formerly housed the Social Security Administration. In December 2023, Ernst’s office noted HUD and Social Security only used 7% of that office space.

The Trump administration is selling off two smaller properties in Washington, D.C., as well as about 40 other buildings across the country, according to the General Services Administration. The other Washington properties are a 133,000-square-foot building on 14th Street and another 845,000-square-foot building on 7th Street, as well as a 295,000-square-foot federal office building in nearby suburban Maryland. 

Among the more than 40 properties up for sale outside of the Capital region are buildings with more than 1 million square feet in St. Louis; Los Angeles; Cleveland; and Jeffersonville, Indiana.

“GSA is focused on supporting President Trump’s agenda of rightsizing the federal footprint, cutting costs for American taxpayers, and optimizing the space agencies need to achieve their missions,” a General Services Administration spokesperson told The Daily Signal. “This initiative aims to engage the market, attract interested parties, and inform strategies that will expedite the disposition of federal assets, consistent with all applicable laws.”

The post Trump Administration Moves to Slash Federal Building Space. How Much Could That Save Taxpayers? appeared first on The Daily Signal.