Solar Picnic Tables? How the Federal Government Has Treated Your Tax Dollars With Utter Disdain
10th April 2025
The House Oversight Committee’s subpanel on government efficiency held a hearing Tuesday exposing billions of taxpayer dollars wasted annually on outdated federal buildings.
Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who leads the Subcommittee on Delivering Government Efficiency, opened the hearing by slamming federal agencies for maintaining a bloated real estate footprint. She pledged to continue pushing to “right-size” the federal government’s real estate portfolio.
“Here in D.C., [the Government Accountability Office] found in 2023 that the vast majority of federal agency headquarters buildings were less than 25% occupied—some much less,” Greene said. “Meanwhile, from 2022 to 2024, the backlog of deferred maintenance on the aging buildings the government owns grew from $216 billion to $370 billion. That’s more than one-third of a trillion dollars it will cost to restore them—if we don’t sell them.”