Top Republican James Comer is leading the charge in Congress to drag 228,000 federal government employees back into the office.
Currently, he is focusing on presenting recommendations to Donald Trump for a new operational strategy for the government. The aim is to reduce the high number of federal employees who work remotely.
Comer, who leads the influential House Oversight Committee, will conduct a hearing on Wednesday regarding the continuation of federal telecommuting procedures post the COVID outbreak.
In an exclusive statement to DailyMail.com, Comer disclosed, ‘It has been observed that over half of federal staff members, especially those working in offices, regularly engage in telework or operate fully remotely.’
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.
Republicans are working to get a new government business plan to Donald Trump after investigating how many federal employees are working from home
A picture from the House Oversight Committee’s telework report shows the Department of Health and Human Services with most of its lights off before 5:00 pm. The Republican chairman James Comer claims half of the U.S. 2.2 million person federal workforce regularly teleworks
‘The business model under the Biden administration is you can work from home, and there’s no accountability or transparency,’ the chairman continued. ‘It’s not been well received by the American people.’
A report from the committee staff released Wednesday finds that of the over 2 million federal workers 228,000 are completely remote, meaning they never go into an office.
Many of the work from home employees were allowed to do so during the COVID-19 pandemic and have never returned to their assigned offices, the chair said.
His committee sent inquiries to each federal agency to ascertain how many employees were teleworking and what the levels of office occupancy are.
However, he claims the agencies have displayed a total lack of transparency and that few have responded to his requests.
‘Again, we’ve asked these questions of federal agencies, and they have not been transparent at all with their replies. Some agencies have given us some information. Some agencies have never even responded to our request for information.’
During their investigation the Oversight Committee found that some agencies who had employees come into the office one or two days a week did not list these employees as ‘teleworkers.’
Instead they were counted as employees that come into the office regularly.
The Social Security Administration headquarters has a virtually empty parking lot at 11:00 am on Wednesday December 6, 2023. According to the Government Accountability Office, 17 of 24 federal agency headquarters buildings in D.C. were operating at 25 percent or less capacity as of March
Over half of the Department of Education’s 4,245 employees do not regularly show up to work, the committee’s report found
DOGE co-chair Elon Musk has said getting federal workers back into offices is a priority
There are also many questions surrounding which employees can qualify for telework and why, the report details.
This lack of transparency has added to lawmaker’s skepticism about the need for such remote working measures.
‘The Biden administration will go down in history as the least transparent presidential administration in history,’ Comer lamented.
‘This shouldn’t be hard to answer what percentage of your workforce is teleworking, but they don’t want to give us any information, and very few media outlets are even curious about it.’
Practically, teleworking employees do not appear to be as effective as those who show up to the office, Comer argued.
He expressed frustration about the difficulty his office goes through trying to do basic administrative work for constituents.
It is difficulty to get workers from many federal branches on the phone, and he recounted his recent challenges trying to get a worker from the Social Security Administration (SSA) on the line.
‘There’s a record backlog of initial disability claims,’ he said. ‘There’s long wait times for the field offices and it’s impossible to get Social Security Administration employees on the phone.’
Oversight Committee Chair James Comer
‘And we believe this is because there’s too much teleworking going on.’
It is also ‘impossible’ to get somebody on the phone at the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy, he added.
The chairman also touched on how the widespread misuse of telework has eroded public trust.
‘The American people know it, and they expect a federal government that is efficient and productive, and they don’t have that right now,’ Comer said.
The hearing Wednesday promises to be an initial step towards a broader realignment of the government’s remote work policies.
