Political Quotes

“Historically, for 20 years anyhow, while this problem has been identified, these issues have historically been bipartisan. In fact, it was former President Obama who advocated agencies to freeze and then reduce their space footprint, recognizing that agencies had far more space than they needed. To the gentleman who just spoke, GSA actually wants to do it. They want to reduce the space, but the agencies won't allow it. Why would they? They get so much space, and they don't have to deal with managing it or not. They just get the space, and they can continue on their other work with as much space as they need, sometimes 3,000 square feet per employee. A lot of people in America would like to have a house that is 3,000 square feet for their whole family. If they were watching today and found out that the Federal Government was paying for that, that their taxes were paying for that when they couldn't afford it themselves, they would be furious. The Obama administration set a standard that agencies had to account for things like teleworking, actual space usage, and planning for the space. For example, in an agency that may have 1,000 people assigned to a building, only a portion of those people would be counted when it came to desks and space. It puts into consideration things like teleworking. The Obama administration even proposed selling the Department of Labor building based on this type of space utilization and counting.…”