[JustTheNews] "The Biden-Harris Administration has ceded too much authority to the federal union bosses, allowing their preference to work from home to take precedence over fulfilling agencies’ missions and serving the American people," Rep. James Comer said.
The House Oversight and Accountability Committee found Wednesday that vast numbers of federal employees telework from home, wasting billions of taxpayer dollars spent on office space, and the Biden administration has enabled such accommodations to continue during President-elect Donald Trump’s next administration.
“The Biden-Harris administration has ceded too much authority to the federal union bosses, allowing their preference to work from home to take precedence over fulfilling agencies’ missions and serving the American people,” the committee declared in a report decrying the continued widespread use of telework since the COVID-19 pandemic ended.
The report’s release came ahead of a hearing held by House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., on Wednesday called “The Stay-at-Home Federal Workforce: Another Biden-Harris Legacy,” at 10 a.m. Eastern Time.
TELEWORK FINDINGS
The committee found the Biden administration appears to exaggerate the number of federal employees working in-office. The administration’s own data shows that as of last May, among “the 2.28 million federal civilian employees, approximately 228,000 are never required to show up to the office, and nearly all of the other 1.1 million employees technically-eligible for telework are engaged in telework.” The employees eligible for telework “were in the office an average of three days a week.”
Additionally, several agencies have telework-eligible employees who “collectively spend less than half their work hours in the office.” Employees who telework “must report to the office on occasion,” whereas, “remote employees never need to show up to work.”
Teleworking employees have roughly doubled since before the COVID-19 pandemic, and remote workers have jumped from 2% to 10% since fiscal year 2019.
"[B]etween September 2019 and May 2024, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) went from 2 percent remote to 29 percent; OPM went from 7 percent remote to 40 percent remote; the General Services Administration (GSA) went from 6 percent remote to 50 percent remote; and the Department of Education (ED) workforce went from 2 percent remote to 55 percent remote," the report reads.
UNUSED OFFICE SPACE
In a July 2023 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report referenced by the House committee report, the federal agency “found that 17 of the 24 federal agencies used on average an estimated 25 percent or less of the capacity of their headquarter buildings.”
Furthermore, “Some agency headquarters reported occupancy rates as low as nine percent.” The U.S. government spends about $7 billion a year to lease and maintain federal agency office space.
During a November 2023 hearing with General Services Administration Administrator (GSA) Robin Carnahan, Comer said, “Federal agencies spent $3.3 billion dollars on furniture over the past few years apparently to furnish office spaces left mostly empty under maximum telework. Some agencies spent hundreds of thousands of dollars just on updating empty conference rooms.”
Carnahan herself “only worked at GSA headquarters in D.C. for 64 workdays—approximately one in four work days—from March 2022 to March 2023. She spent most of her time, 121 days, teleworking from Missouri,” according to the report.
CONTINUED TELEWORK INTO TRUMP ADMIN
Some Biden administration officials “collaborated with union allies to further entrench telework guarantees for portions of the federal workforce covered by collective bargaining agreements,” according to the report.
Last April, the Office of Personnel Management issued a rule “aimed to more deeply entrench the federal workforce by restricting executive discretion over the classification of federal employee positions,” the report reads.
Last April, the Office of Personnel Management issued a rule “aimed to more deeply entrench the federal workforce by restricting executive discretion over the classification of federal employee positions,” the report reads. The rule does not include meaningful telework reforms and “seeks to prevent the incoming Trump Administration from holding ineffective bureaucrats accountable.”
Also, “the outgoing Biden-Harris Administration entered into long-term [collective bargaining agreements] with federal employee unions that limit management authority through unprecedented concessions, including guaranteeing telework for federal bureaucrats.”
For example, in late November, then-Commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA) Martin O’Malley approved an agreement with the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) that "seeks to lock in minimum telework levels for 42,000 SSA employees until 2029.”
The agreement was reached after O’Malley announced that he would be running for Democratic National Committee chair and days before he resigned from SSA.
“Nearly all of the 58,875 SSA employees are telework eligible, and those eligible employees have spent only 46.9 percent of their time in the office,” according to the report.
“President Trump has promised to reform the federal workforce and bring federal employees back to their offices,” the report explains. “The Biden-Harris Administration’s lame duck political gamesmanship will hinder and constrain the ability of the incoming Trump Administration to manage employees effectively and responsibly, and to increase accountability to the public.”
AFGE released a statement ahead of the House Oversight panel hearing on Wednesday:
“As a preliminary matter, AFGE is compelled to note that the title of today’s hearing unfortunately distorts how telework fits into larger work practices and protocols at federal agencies in order to unjustly criticize federal employees. Hardworking, dedicated federal employees should not be derided as ‘stay-at-home workers.’ Our members perform vital roles in public safety, law enforcement, and health care – including providing care for active-duty military and millions of veterans. The majority of our members were ineligible for telework even when the pandemic was at its worst and no vaccines or treatments were available. Many members died of COVID during this period, likely contracted while performing their work for the American people. For many thousands of our members, it is thus bitterly ironic to now castigate the ‘stay-at-home federal workforce.’”
REPORT RECOMMENDATIONS
The report lists nine recommendations for telework reform in the federal government. The recommendations are:
Base telework and remote work policies on achievement of mission outcomes, not employee preferences or union demands.
Establish automated systems for tracking the use of telework and remote work, and create clear, measurable metrics to evaluate its costs and benefits.
Impose more frequent and timely reporting requirements on agency-level telework, to better inform Executive Branch leaders, Congress and the public.
Use the White House and central management agencies to implement an enterprise-wide approach to telework and remote work that prioritizes the public interest. Do not permit a telework bidding war among agencies looking to attract federal workers that transfer between them based on which will let them stay home the most.
Align the federal property footprint with the government’s office space needs. Dispose of unneeded property and terminate unnecessary leases, while optimizing use of the space that remains.
Introduce and enact a new version of the SHOW Up Act, restoring agency telework to no more than pre- pandemic levels. Only permit higher levels at agencies that make a convincing, measurable case for doing so.
Consider legislation disallowing collective bargaining over federal employee telework.
Consider legislation that would open to renegotiation at the start of each new Presidential term all existing collective bargaining agreements with federal employees.
Consider legislation to pay all remote federal employees at the rest of United States' locality pay rate, to encourage a broader geographic dispersion of the federal workforce, and to reduce cost to taxpayers.
Top Republican James Comer is leading the charge in Congress to drag 228,000 federal government employees back into the office.
This week, he's working to provide Donald Trump suggestions for a new government 'business model' to cut down on the staggering number of federal teleworkers.
Comer, who chairs the powerful House Oversight Committee, is holding a hearing Wednesday on federal teleworking practices that have persisted long after the COVID pandemic.
'We know that more than half of the federal employees, and a vast majority of federal office workers, are either regularly teleworking or fully remote,' Comer revealed to DailyMail.com exclusively.
With roughly 2.2 million civilian federal employees, the vast scope of how many of government's workers are remote has been difficult to quantify, the Republican admitted. Comer also shared that he spoke to Donald Trump about the scale of teleworking over the weekend when he was visiting the president-elect at Mar-a-Lago along with other lawmakers.
'At the very least, President Trump expects the federal workforce to show up for work,' the chairman said of their chat.
The lawmaker also shared he will share his findings with Trump, who he then expects will use the information to inform his cost-cutting initiatives, such as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
'What we're trying to do, as quick as he gets in office, is to provide him with as much data as possible, to help them try to come up with a new business model of the federal government and the federal work,' Comer shared.
The art world is in tears. See the link to see some of the reasons why.
[NYPost] A trove of nearly 200 artworks by Hunter Biden has been destroyed — one of the casualties of the wildfires ravaging Los Angeles, The Post has learned.
The controversial art had been in storage near the Pacific Palisades home of Hunter’s Hollywood attorney Kevin Morris and is valued at “millions of dollars,” a source close to the Biden family said.
Was valued, anyway. And now it isn’t.
Morris, who loaned the first son nearly $5 million to help pay a tax bill and has been financing a documentary on him, lives in a sprawling five-bedroom, six-bathroom home which is among the few houses still intact in the posh neighborhood, The Post can confirm.
Morris could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
A lawyer for Hunter Biden, who is a self-taught artist who turned to painting while in recovery from drug addiction, did not immediately return a request for comment.
A Soho gallerist who represented the first son’s work and had organized solo shows of his paintings in Los Angeles and New York from 2021 said he broke ties with Hunter last year.
“I don’t know what’s happening with the art,” said gallery owner Georges Berges. “I have some of his work on canvas, some metal pieces at the gallery.”
Hunter’s art pieces have been priced as high as $500,000 each, although Berges told The Post the average price was closer to $85,000.
Morris bought $875,000 worth of Hunter’s artworks via Berges, many of them of flowers on Japanese paper, he said.
Berges told a congressional panel investigating the Biden family’s assets last year that Hunter knew the people who bought most of his art, despite assurances from the White House that buyers would be kept secret to avoid a conflict of interest with the president.
In addition to Morris, Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali was named as another buyer. She obtained works before and after scoring a prestigious presidential appointment, according to reports.
#6
Fires are a natural part of California ecosystems. They burn dead brush to allow for new growth. Apparently, they burn other things that need to be burned. It's nature's way.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/16/2025 14:21 Comments ||
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#7
With fair valuation, I suspect the claim payout would resemble:
#3
Dunno what it is but I'm guessing he's working some kind of an angle here. He's always working some kind of an angle.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/16/2025 14:32 Comments ||
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#4
Keeps all the rich and celebrities from leaving which would be financially and prestigiously embarrassing.
Second, it controls who could potentially be a purchaser to one allowed developer, which of course is on board with what the government will want to do with said properties.
[Breitbart] Outgoing FBI Director Christopher Wray revealed during an interview on Sunday, a week before he steps down, that China has penetrated America’s water treatment plants, electric grid, and other critical civilian infrastructure, and is lying “in wait” for an opportunity to cyberattack at a time and place of its choosing.
Asked on CBS’s 60 Minutes about Chinese penetration of U.S. cyber and infrastructure, Wray said China’s cyber program is the largest in the world and has stolen more of Americans’ personal and corporate data than every nation combined. Then, he added:
But even beyond the cyber theft. There’s another part of the Chinese cyber threat that I think has not gotten the attention publicly that it I think desperately deserves. And that is Chinese government’s pre-positioning on American civilian critical infrastructure. To lie in wait on those networks to be in a position to wreak havoc and can inflict real-world harm at a time and place of their choosing.
Wray said China has already infiltrated malware into critical American infrastructure.
“Things like water treatment plants. We’re talking about transportation systems. We’re talking about targeting of our energy sector, the electric grid, natural gas pipelines. And recently we’ve seen targeting of our telecommunications systems,” he said.
Wray said China has also been listening into Americans’ calls.
CBS News said China has gathered communications of U.S. national security officials, as well as the Kamala Harris campaign and President-Elect Donald Trump himself.
The revelation prompted outrage from former Trump administration officials who say Wray did not do enough to stem the threat from China on his watch, only to discuss it publicly a week from stepping down.
Joshua Steinman, former National Security Council senior director for cyber security during the Trump administration, posted on X:
This enrages me. I left them with the tools they needed to confront this. And it appears those tools went unused for four years. Total mismanagement.
Fox News show host Brian Kilmeade slammed Wray for failing to tackle the threat and criticized the Biden administration for talking about it but not acting.
Other commentators on X slammed Wray for waiting “until the last second” to warn Americans.
“Why did FBI Director Christopher Wray wait until the last second before leaving office to do a 60 min interview and tell us that China has sleeper cells all over the country…?” one posted.
“Wray knows that Chinese agents have infiltrated the country in order to attack the power grid whenever they choose. How did they get here? What EXACTLY is your job description,” another posted.
Wray called stepping down “one of the hardest decisions” he has ever made, but said he had little choice after President-Elect Donald Trump made it clear he would be replaced.
Trump has nominated Kash Patel, former deputy Director of National Intelligence and Pentagon chief of staff for the role.
[X] After he gifted them something that actually works, when so little in California does? Oh dear.
I interviewed a Los Angeles firefighter with 20+ years of service. The truths I found are harrowing. @GavinNewsom ordered the removal of @elonmusk from the command post, and ordered the Cal Fire firefighters to return all donated starlinks.
Trump's attorney general pick Pam Bondi just went toe-to-toe with Adam Schiff for 7 minutes, calling him out for constantly lying to the American people.
🔥🔥
Bondi to Schiff: "I'm not going to mislead this body, nor you. You were censured by Congress for comments like… pic.twitter.com/NeWcHJghab
"You’re so worried about Liz Cheney. Do you know what we should be worried about? The crime rate in California right now is through the roof. Your robberies are 87% higher than the national average."
Posted by: Fred ||
01/16/2025 00:00 ||
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Schiff should be worried about Ms. Bondi investigating him.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/16/2025 14:42 Comments ||
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[PUBLISH.TWITTER] Fascinating follow-up to the OMG undercover report on Jamie Mannina and his firing. Keep watching for the discussion with the college kids at the end.
WOW 🚨 The Pentagon official James O’Keefe just exposed was working to sabotage Donald Trump WAS A SPECIAL AGENT WITH THE FBI AND WORKED FOR HILLARY CLINTON AT THE STATE DEPT
It ALWAYS comes back to the same corrupt people, nothing ever changes
[PJMedia] Today we have Scott Turner (HUD), Scott Bessent (Treasury), Lee Zeldin (EPA), and Doug "Eyebrows" Burgum (Interior).
The hearings started at 10:00 a.m. ET.
Townhall is liveblogging here.
10 minutes ago
Matt Vespa
This is the end of the Bessent hearing.
Dems were keen on making sure the world knows they think the rich are evil, they don't pay their fair share in taxes, and they're the party for working people -- all of which are lies.
The GOP asked routine questions, but we all know this guy is safe.
Some bipartisan work might be done on credit card company fees, interest rates, and small business fees.
Bessent was calm, collected, and answered all questions. Some were a bit rocky in the delivery, but this guy won't be blocked.
an hour ago
Mia Cathell
And that's a wrap on Zeldin's confirmation hearing. Some standout moments:
Similar to Sean Duffy's nomination debate, there were showings of bipartisanship.
Ranking minority member Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) presented the new GOP committee chair, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), with a gavel crafted from West Virginian wood and used by her father. "Madam chair, may you bang it in good health," Whitehouse joked, adding that they have "indeed worked well together" and calling for future "big bipartisan opportunities." Capito gratefully accepted the gavel.
“I'd like to let everyone know that I like the chairman. That's a good start,” Whitehouse said.
Minutes later, Whitehouse suggested Zeldin "will be merely a rubber stamp for looters and polluters who are setting the Trump agenda."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) pressed Zeldin on whether he sees climate change as an "existential threat" and if he agrees with Trump saying climate change is "a hoax."
"I believe that climate change is real. As far as President Trump goes, the context that I've heard him speak about it was the criticism of policies that have been enacted because of climate change and about the economic costs of some policies," Zeldin replied.
Sanders, unsatisfied, said: "I would respectfully disagree with you. I think he's called it a hoax time and time again." Zeldin reiterated that Trump's comments should be taken in the context of the climate alarmism policy landscape. "I think that he's concerned about the economic costs of some policies where there's a debate and a difference of opinion," Zeldin explained.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), who introduced Zeldin, said he will "correct the course of the EPA." Capito said "the EPA must return to its core missions," better manage tax dollars, and implement environmental policies that also benefit economic growth.
She noted that Zeldin met ahead of time with multiple members of the committee. "I think that was definitely reflected in the tone and the substance that we saw here today, so I appreciate that," Capito said.
[Breitbart] Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has removed Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) from the chairmanship of the House’s intelligence committee, reportedly due to concerns President-elect Donald Trump had about Turner.
Johnson’s decision to remove Turner from atop the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), first reported Wednesday by Punchbowl News, marks the first significant shakeup from Johnson in the new Congress.
The Speaker has sole authority to appoint the chairmen of select committees, and although Johnson had delayed an official announcement on the committee’s leadership this Congress, his removal of Turner surprised most on Capitol Hill.
Privacy advocates on both sides of the aisle have frequently criticized Turner for doing the bidding of the intelligence community. His fervency towards preserving Section 702 provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that enable intelligence agencies to spy on Americans without warrants particularly rankled Trump. Critics of 702 argue the provision empowers the Deep State beyond constitutional grounds.
Turner was also one of the most vociferous proponents of foreign aid to Ukraine to fight its increasingly quixotic war against Russia. I don't know, divorce your wife, marry a moslem, get compromised, divorce moslem, lose job. Sounds about right.
Posted by: The Walking Unvaxed ||
01/16/2025 06:48 ||
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Is she Moslem? She’s Lebanese-American, but most Lebanese-Americans who are not recent immigrants are actually Christian, not Moslem. They’ve been moving here since early in the last century — the pretentious poet Khalil Ghibran is one of a great many.
Strange, they shalt Criminal Charges against Trump and civil charges against Rudy G., just for saying the Ga. Election results were fraudulent.
Now, 4+ years later, we see Buck-Tooth Stacey Abram's non-profit illegally used $ Millions in Non-Profit funds for her election bid for GA governor and tried to hide it.
Yet no Criminal charges, just a fine?
I am sure GA can find or build a Jail Cell large enough to house Ms. Abrams
Posted by: NN2N1 ||
01/16/2025 04:39 ||
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[11133 views]
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[Guardian] Allocation of funds from Inflation Reduction Act makes it harder for president-elect to halt green initiatives.
The Biden administration has raced to allocate $74bn of funding for climate initiatives before Donald Trump’s inauguration, leaving $20bn vulnerable to potential rollback by the incoming president, new figures reveal.
As the inauguration of Trump looms, the outgoing administration has been accelerating its allocation of cash for climate change and clean energy programs before they are throttled by the incoming US president.
Laden with funds from the landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the Biden administration is rushing to lock in support for renewable power, electric vehicles, batteries and other initiatives aimed at combating the climate crisis in a way that Trump cannot easily axe.
Trump has vowed to kill off what he calls the “green new scam and rescind all of the unspent funds” once he becomes president on 20 January. “That will be such an honor,” the president-elect said on the campaign trail, calling the climate bill “the greatest scam in the history of any country”.
While Trump will be able to stymie unallocated spending, funding already committed will be difficult to claw back. The Biden administration has therefore been racing to push out money to make it Trump-proof, having now allocated $74bn of IRA funding, according to figures provided by Atlas Public Policy.
But the outgoing administration still has about $20bn, or around a fifth, of the climate spending unallocated, which will be vulnerable to a Trump rollback once he re-enters the White House.
“The Biden administration has awarded the majority of IRA climate grant funding, but billions are still available for climate-smart agriculture, clean energy tax credits, and clean energy loans and much of it could be at risk in 2025,” said Annabelle Rosser, a research analyst at Atlas.
Encouraging companies to make and deploy clean energy components in the US has taken time, as have treasury rules on what qualifies for tax credits, but the Biden administration has sought to move quickly despite this, according to Kate Gordon, formerly a senior adviser to Jennifer Granholm, Biden’s energy secretary.
“There’s been an urgency from the beginning but that urgency is now definitely ramping up,” said Gordon, now chief executive of California Forward. “There’s a huge need to get the money out and contracted.”
Major recent investments include $1.5bn to the electric car manufacturer Rivian in November to expand its presence in Georgia, $460m to Samsung in December to build batteries and $754m to Novonix, also last month, to supply rare earth materials for batteries.
Of the money not yet handed over, there are billions of dollars targeted at climate-friendly farming practices, upgrades to energy efficiency in homes, conservation programs and support for coastal communities dealing with floods and other climate impacts.
The figures from Atlas do not include an array of other programs funded by the IRA, the 2022 bill that also handed money to government agencies and bolstered loans awarded to cutting-edge green technologies. The bulk of the bill’s support comes in the form of ongoing tax credits for projects aimed at cutting planet-heating emissions.
Much of this could now be gutted, with Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, calling the tax credits “wasteful” and vowing to take a “scalpel” to the legislation.
However, some elected Republicans are nervous about a political backlash to a complete repeal of the climate bill, despite having unanimously voted against it.
According to the Atlas investment tracker, more than three-quarters of the $160bn in privately led clean energy and manufacturing projects supported by the IRA are in Republican-held districts and are responsible for more than 166,000 newly announced jobs. Last summer, a group of Republican lawmakers wrote to Johnson urging him not to dismantle the legislation.
“This new administration is really doubling down on fossil fuels but ending these projects would put pressure on ratepayers and that would be a disaster politically. No one wants that,” said Gordon.
“Some parts of the IRA will be thrown under the bus but I don’t think there will be a massive slowdown of everything because that doesn’t make political sense.”
While the IRA is still set to help spur cuts in America’s planet-heating emissions, the start of the Trump administration comes at a time when the US, like many other countries, is badly lagging in its efforts to contain the climate crisis. Last year was the hottest ever recorded globally, researchers have confirmed, adding to a string of record warm years.
The pace of emissions cuts is not fast enough to temper this and meet international climate goals, scientists have warned, amid a growing stampede of storms, floods and other climate-driven disasters, such as the wildfires that have ravaged Los Angeles, taking an increasing toll on a superheated world.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
