Washington, D.C.—The following are opening remarks from Ranking Member of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Rick Larsen (D-WA) and Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management Greg Stanton (D-AZ) during today’s hearing titled, “Cutting Costs, Adding Value: The Future of Federal Property.”
Video of Larsen’s and Stanton’s opening statements are here and here.
More information on the hearing can be found here.
Ranking Member Larsen:
Thank you, Subcommittee Chairman Perry and Ranking Member Stanton, for convening today’s hearing on federal real estate.
A lot has happened at General Services Administration (GSA) since the beginning of 2025. At the beginning of the year, GSA’s Public Buildings Service (PBS) had 5,655 full-time employees; now, that number is at 3,126.
That total would be even lower, but GSA reversed course on 392 departures after realizing its inability to get all its work done.
At the beginning of the year, PBS had 11 distinct geographic regions, but after a “reorganization,” PBS is now structured “based on integrated functional operations which are centrally managed with a portfolio structure that continues to support a geographic presence nationwide.”
What does that actually mean? I don’t know.
At the beginning of the year, PBS used its purchasing power to encourage commercial landlords and federal agency tenants to adopt environmentally sustainable practices to reduce the impact of climate change, promote energy efficiency and save money.
But the Administration rescinded federal building sustainability requirements and terminated PBS’s efforts to lease space for federal tenants in ‘green’ buildings.
At the beginning of the year, the White House had an East Wing—and now it does not. At the beginning of the year, there were no plans to build a privately funded ballroom on the White House grounds. But that is exactly what is happening without collaboration with Congress, the National Capital Planning Commission or the Commission on Fine Arts.
The president started the project without first notifying the public or consulting experts. We still don’t know how much the project will cost, what the ballroom will look like, who is paying for construction, and who will be responsible for ongoing maintenance and repairs.
Over the course of the year, agencies were directed to identify underutilized and unneeded owned and leased space for disposal.
DOGE and OMB utilized this information to terminate 260 leases. That is an achievement. But there was also significant chaos and mixed messaging surrounding the disposal of buildings and the termination of leases.
In March, GSA published a list of 440 properties it intended to dispose of, but the list disappeared from its website within hours after observers noted that the list included the headquarters of more than a dozen agencies— including its own.
GSA then issued a revised list with only 320 entries, but that list also disappeared from GSA’s website the next day.
Earlier this week Bloomberg Law reported that the White House is independently soliciting bids to recommend the demolition of four federal buildings in Washington, D.C. without the input of GSA.
According to a former director of GSA’s Office of Planning and Design, GSA has “sole authority over this process,” yet it has not followed the procedures required under historic preservation and environmental laws for these buildings to be destroyed.
I am pleased that GSA is making great progress on the three Washington State Land Ports of Entry (LPOE) projects, but it takes a while.
During a recent Whatcom Council of Governments meeting, GSA staff shared plans to combine the design-build contracts for the Kenneth G. Ward Land Port of Entry in Lynden and the Sumas Land Port of Entry in Sumas.
The current expectation is that Lynden will start its construction modernization first and then Sumas will follow approximately midway through construction. This provides port operators the ability to divert at least some of Sumas’ commercial traffic to the modernized Lynden port, while the Sumas port is modernized.
Combining two of the projects will enable them to complete both ports in three years instead of four and, hopefully, for less money—something we all can support.
In conclusion, the Administration said from the outset that it plans to shrink the government’s real estate holdings by offloading unnecessary leases and federal buildings—and that is a laudable goal.
But the president has not been forthcoming about the details and the decision-making and that is cause for concern.
I thank our witnesses for appearing before us today, and I look forward to their testimony.
Ranking Member Stanton:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the witnesses.
This hearing is about two things: cutting costs and adding value. That is the standard the public expects from us, and it should be the standard we expect from ourselves. Federal property is expensive, complicated and central to how government serves people. When we get these decisions right, taxpayers save money and agencies work better. When we get them wrong, the public pays twice—once in tax dollars and again in the quality of service they receive.
When I was Mayor of Phoenix, real efficiency never came from swinging an axe. It came from discipline, planning and knowing exactly how each decision affected the people we were there to serve.
Government is not a corporation reworking a balance sheet. It is a network of public responsibilities. Cuts that ignore that reality don’t create efficiency; they undermine it.
And we don’t have to theorize about that; we just lived through it. DOGE, the billionaire, tech-bro failure known as the Department of Government Efficiency, was a textbook case of what happens when you chase cuts without understanding value.
It drove federal property decisions at a speed and scale that outran planning, operational needs and basic due diligence. Agencies were told to vacate buildings before replacement space was ready. These decisions were driven by targets and assumptions, not by reliable, validated information about how federal space was being used or which functions depended on it.
Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record the July 2025 Minority Staff Report from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
That investigation found that DOGE wasted at least $21.7 billion in six months. It burned $14.8 billion paying roughly 200,000 employees not to work. Then it pushed more than 100,000 additional workers into administrative limbo, costing taxpayers another $6.1 billion. It froze essential projects—from energy grid upgrades to medical research—wasting hundreds of millions more and offering nothing in return.
DOGE is a clear example of what happens when you chase cost and ignore value. I raise it here because, as Ranking Member, I look forward to working with the Chair to advance an approach that recognizes efficiency as both cutting costs and adding value, and I thank the Chair for making those the focus of today’s hearing.
As we look ahead, DOGE also taught us another important lesson. It exposed a deeper structural problem that complicates this committee’s work now and in the months to come.
We are responsible for overseeing all federal property, but GSA does not give us a clear, portfolio-wide view of how federal buildings are being used. We get lease prospectuses. We get scattered updates. We do not get a regular, comprehensive report on the Public Buildings Service portfolio.
For a system this large, this expensive, and this central to the functioning of government, that blind spot is unacceptable. DOGE showed how dangerous it is to make major space decisions in that kind of fog.
That is why I introduced bipartisan legislation, cosponsored by Chairman Perry, requiring the GSA Administrator to submit an annual report to Congress on the state of the federal real estate portfolio.
This is basic governance. If we want real savings, real accountability, and real value, we need complete information about the buildings where federal work is done. And we need to ensure that wherever we go next, we are guided by data and the full scope of information.
Federal property is a public asset. It should strengthen the work inside it and the people who rely on these services. Today’s hearing is an opportunity to learn from DOGE’s failures, insist on better data, and set a clear expectation that cutting costs and adding value are equally important to the future of federal property.
I look forward to the testimony.
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