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President Donald Trump has used his business expertise to advocate for Americans’ finances in the White House, from demanding better trade deals with foreign nations to fighting inflation, which exploded to more than 9% for a while under Joe Biden. One plan to save money, even generate income, now is being advanced by Sen. Joni Ernst R-Iowa, who has proposed the idea of letting the government sell its vacant buildings, eliminating ongoing maintenance costs and even generating sales price income. “For too long, the entrenched bureaucracy has used red tape to prevent these ghost towns from being sold off,” she said, in a report at Fox News. 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,” the report said. It was several years ago she released a report on the federal government’s lack of use of many buildings, in her “naughty list of no-show federal agencies” following the COVID-19 pandemic closures. Her plan is the “Disposing of Inactive Structures and Properties by Offering for Sale And Lease (DISPOSAL) Act.” It would put on the market immediately the Frances Perkins Federal Building, home to the United States 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 the Department of Housing and Urban Development was headquartered before announcing in June it planned to move; United States Department of Agriculture’s headquarters at the Department of Agriculture South Building; and the Hubert H. Humphrey Federal Building, which headquarters the Department of Health and Human Services. The report noted there are an estimated 7,700 vacant federal buildings nationwide, and nearly 2,300 more that are mostly empty. “The Office of Management and Budget reported in 2023 that the annual cost of operating federal buildings deemed ‘underutilized’ sits at $81.346 million, while the General Services Administration reported in 2025 that deferred maintenance and repair backlogs at federal buildings exceeds $6 billion and will balloon to more than $20 billion in five years,.” Fox reported. The legislation lines up a path for more building sales in the future. Ernst is part of the Senate’s support team for Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, which is working to cut spending and save taxpayers money. Trump himself has expressed concern over federal workers who stopped showing up at their offices during COVID, and haven’t returned. “We have hundreds of thousands of federal workers who have not been showing up to work. My administration will reclaim power from this unaccountable bureaucracy, and we will restore true democracy to America again. Any federal bureaucrat who resists this change will be removed from office immediately,” he charged.
