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The federal government is wasting $7 billion on leases for office space — despite around half of its employees working from home on a regular basis more than four years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new report.The House Oversight Committee probed remote work policies in the Biden administration after pandemic restrictions were lifted — and found US taxpayers had doled out “billions to pay for owned and leased federal office space that remains largely vacant,” according to a 41-page report issued Wednesday.A Government Accountability Office report in July 2023 cited in the report found that the feds pay about $7 billion annually to lease and maintain office space — even as 17 of the 24 federal agencies are using as little as 9% and only as much as 49% of their buildings’ capacities.According to subsequent findings from the Office of Management and Budget, “more than half of federal employees were either teleworking regularly or fully remote” by May 2024, the report noted.It’s unclear whether many have returned to offices in the nation’s capital in the seven months since then.“In other words, the federal government is wasting billions in taxpayer dollars to pay for underutilized office space,” it states.Federal agencies still purchased $3.3 billion in furniture between 2020 and 2022, according to an audit by the taxpayer watchdog OpenTheBooks that followed the GAO report.Other findings from a report conducted by Sen.
Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) show the government has 7,000 entirely vacant buildings and 2,500 are just occupied by a portion of the federal workforce.Ernst noted in a separate report exclusively reported by The Post that Interior Department employees were bilking taxpayers of $400,000 after improperly claiming to reside in Washington, DC.Many agencies are still keeping in place Biden’s work-from-home options that are “detrimental,” the report also noted, and that more evidence compiled by the committee �...