Legislation has been introduced to relocate at least 30% of the federal employees who work at agency headquarters offices outside the Washington, DC metropolitan area.
The DRAIN THE SWAMP Act (S. 5614) as the bill is known was introduced by Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA). Companion legislation has also been introduced in the House (H.R. 10517) by Congressman Aaron Bean (R-FL).
Any federal employees whose permanent duty stations were relocated would no longer receive Washington, DC area locality pay and would instead be paid at the locality pay rate of the new location. This would most likely amount to a pay cut since the Washington, DC locality area is one of the higher paying locality pay areas.
The bill adds that no relocation incentives would be paid and that any federal employees who were relocated would have to do so within 90 days of being notified that the locations of their permanent duty stations were changing.
Additionally, the bill stipulates that any federal employees who are relocated would not be allowed to work remotely on a full-time basis, and any federal employees who remained in the DC area would have to work in person 100% of the time.
This provision of the bill is likely aimed at stopping the potential for federal employees to live and work in areas with lower locality pay rates while collecting the higher pay rate from an area such as Washington, DC. Ernst has found multiple instances of this happening with the federal government’s expanded telework provisions that started during the COVID-19 pandemic in investigations that she has conducted.
The bill further stipulates that the unneeded office space created by the relocations would be sold off and reduced by at least 30%.
In a statement about the bill, Ernst said:
My investigations have exposed how bureaucrats have been doing just about everything besides their job during the workday. Federal employees have shown they don’t want to work in Washington, and in the Christmas spirit, I am making their wish come true. Instead of keeping them bogged down in the swamp, I’m working to get bureaucrats beyond the D.C. beltway to remind public servants who they work for. In addition to improving government service for all Americans, we can give taxpayers an extra Christmas gift by selling off unused and expensive office buildings.
President-elect Trump has campaigned on the promise to “clean out the deep state” and he said he wants to move up to 100,000 government positions outside the Washington, DC area. He said he intends to continue the effort that he began during his first administration when the Bureau of Land Management was relocated to Colorado (the Biden administration moved the headquarters back to Washington).
The legislation has virtually no chance of passing in the remaining days of the current Congress, but it illustrates what could be on the agenda next year, given the previous efforts of the Trump administration and the president-elect’s promise to continue those efforts in his second term.
