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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 Rep. Greg Stanton (D-AZ), during today’s hearing titled, “The General Services Administration: Examining the Future of Federal Real Estate Management to Reduce Costs for the Taxpayer.”
Videos 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 Chair and Ranking Member Stanton, for convening today’s hearing on federal real estate.
Administrator Forst, thank you for participating in this hearing—your first before this committee.
It has been a tumultuous 14 months for GSA.
Staff have been reduced, regional offices have been shuttered, building sustainability goals have been eliminated, leases have been terminated then reinstated and buildings have been on and off disposal lists.
The President has repeatedly made significant decisions on federal property renovations without consulting and coordinating with legally mandated parties.
Administrator Forst, I would like to hear how you plan to stabilize GSA and deliver the highest value to American taxpayers.
The Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) has long complained about GSA’s poor management of federal courthouses.
Recently, the AOC transmitted draft legislation to Congress that would grant the Judiciary authority to acquire, lease, operate, maintain, construct and repair courthouses with funding obtained directly from Congress.
I look forward to learning more about this request and how it would impact the stability of GSA’s Federal Buildings Fund (FBF).
Administrator Forst, you recently signed an MOU with the Defense Ministry of Pakistan to renovate the Roosevelt Hotel in New York.
The Roosevelt Hotel is owned by Pakistan International Airlines. It is not property owned by the federal government.
I would like to hear about the MOU and why the federal government is involved in the redevelopment of property owned by a foreign government when, in fact, the role of GSA is to manage and dispose of federal government-owned property. This doesn’t make any sense, and I hope that you are able to share any available legal counsel advice that you received so that we can better understand the legal justification for this action.
GSA is required to submit to this Committee descriptions of proposed construction, renovation and leasing projects that require funding in excess of the established annual prospectus thresholds.
Previous GSA Administrators requested that Congress raise the prospectus threshold to $10 million and a bill recently introduced in the Senate would do just that.
Please share with us if you support raising the prospectus threshold, why and to what amount.
Finally, GSA has made great progress on three critical Land Port of Entry projects in Blaine, Sumas and Lynden—all in my district.
Public Building Service Acting Commissioner Andrew Heller recently updated me on these projects. I look forward to working with him and GSA staff to expedite delivery of all three LPOE construction projects.
There is bipartisan support in Congress for reducing unnecessary leases and disposing of excess federal property to increase efficiency and save taxpayer dollars. But that support requires consistent communication from GSA.
Administrator Forst, I hope that under your leadership GSA will provide better transparency and improve communication with Congress, and perhaps we can avoid what we saw in 2025 so that in 2026 and beyond, we can have a better relationship with GSA as we try to get the best taxpayer value from federal real estate. Thank you for appearing before us today.
Ranking Member Stanton:
Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you, Administrator Forst, for appearing before this committee today.
There’s a real lack of transparency your agency has provided to the American public regarding GSA's role in ICE's rapid expansion across the United States.
And I’m deeply concerned by what is happening entirely outside of your agency's purview.
The Department of Homeland Security is on a warehouse buying spree. Across the country, DHS is purchasing dozens of large commercial warehouses to be converted into mass immigration detention facilities. And it is doing so by going entirely around GSA, the agency that Congress has explicitly charged with managing federal real estate.
We are not talking about a handful of properties. We are talking about facilities with a combined capacity of up to 80,000 detainees. These are not purpose-built detention centers designed with appropriate oversight and public input.
These are commercial warehouses, acquired quickly and quietly, bypassing the procurement processes, the public notice requirements and the consultation with local officials that GSA's standard procedures mandate.
One of these warehouses is in my home state, Arizona. Arizonans did not find out about it through any government transparency process. They found out because advocates and journalists were paying attention. DHS did not even notify city officials.
And once the community did learn about it, the response was immediate. In less than 48 hours, my office collected more than 7,000 comments from Arizonans concerned about this proposal. Hundreds of residents turned out to a city council meeting.
Even the Republican Congressman who represents the area, Paul Gosar, emphasized in a letter to DHS that their goals have to “respect the legitimate interests of the communities that bear its local impacts.”
That kind of response shows exactly why transparency matters. Communities deserve to know what is being built in their neighborhoods before decisions are already finalized.
Administrator Forst, your agency's mission is to construct, manage, and preserve government buildings, and to lease and manage commercial real estate on behalf of the federal government. That is your mandate from Congress.
So, when DHS cuts you out of billions of dollars worth of real estate acquisitions, acquisitions that will fundamentally reshape communities across this country, that is not just a bureaucratic turf question. That is a breakdown of the oversight structure Congress put in place.
And it comes with a real cost. No Congressional oversight, no community input, form school districts, neighborhood associations, even the Mayor and Council. The American people are being left in the dark.
What’s more, at your nomination hearing last October, you told the Senate that "right-sizing our federal real estate portfolio" was one of your top four priorities. I would genuinely like to understand how an agency conducting a shadow warehouse acquisition program, entirely outside your oversight, fits into that vision.
I’d also like to address what we know GSA has been involved in.
GSA has played a significant and largely hidden role in ICE's build-out across this country over the past several months.
We know that, last summer, ICE approached your agency with a massive request: find space for 10,000 immigration enforcement employees across 200 cities nationwide. That single request turned into 249 individual procurements for GSA. Of those, 196 are currently active.
That is not a routine administrative adjustment. That is a sweeping, deliberate, and shady expansion of federal immigration enforcement infrastructure, and GSA has been at the center of it.
What's more, the manner in which this was carried out raises serious concerns on its own. GSA employees were embedded on an "ICE surge" team to find and expand office locations at speed. ICE explicitly asked GSA to disregard standard lease procurement procedures. And GSA has actively hid lease listings from the public.
The result is hundreds of ICE offices quietly planted in the middle of communities, near preschools, elementary schools, houses of worship, and medical facilities, with residents none the wiser until it was done.
The American people deserve transparency. My constituents in Arizona deserve to know what is being built in their backyards. And this committee deserves honest answers about how and why the oversight mechanisms Congress created are being deliberately circumvented.
I look forward to your testimony, Administrator Forst. I hope today you will provide the transparency that has been so sorely lacking.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I yield back
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