Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) proposed a bill on Thursday that would make it easier for the Trump administration to sell off underused federal buildings.
“Despite President Trump calling federal employees back to work, vacant government buildings could easily be mistaken as future locations for Spirit Halloween stores,” Ernst said in a written statement.
“For too long, the entrenched bureaucracy has used red tape to prevent these ghost towns from being sold off,” the Hawkeye State conservative said.
Ernst said the Disposal Act “immediately lists six prime pieces of D.C. real estate on the auction block and slashes through pointless regulations to fast-track the sale of the government’s graveyard of lifeless real estate to generate hundreds of millions of dollars and save taxpayers billions.”
Ernst, the chair of the Senate DOGE Caucus, revealed that the federal government has underutilized federal buildings as far back as 2023.
Her legislation would seek to sell six federal properties in Washington, DC, according to Fox News Digital:
…the Frances Perkins Federal Building, home to the Department of Labor; the Department of Energy’s James V. Forrestal Building; the Theodore Roosevelt Federal Building, which is home to the Office of Personnel Management; Robert C. Weaver Federal Building, where Housing and Urban Development was headquartered before announcing in June it planned to move; Department of Agriculture’s headquarters at its South Building; and the Hubert H. Humphrey Federal Building, headquarters of Health and Human Services.
Ernst’s office said that there are roughly 7,700 vacant federal buildings and 2,265 that are almost empty. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in 2023 found that the annual cost of underutilized buildings amounts to $81,346 million; the General Services Administration in 2025 estimated that the cost of deferred maintenance and repair backlogs of federal buildings eclipses $6 billion and may cost more than $20 billion in five years.
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