Top DOGE senator to demand lame-duck Biden agencies halt costly telework talks, citing voter mandate

The Senate’s top DOGE Republican will send 24 letters – one to each major federal agency head – demanding a halt to last-minute work-from-home negotiations before President Biden returns to Delaware.

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, chair of the Senate GOP Policy Committee, made the demand days after crafting legislation for 2025 that would “decentralize” and relocate one-third of the federal workforce outside Washington, D.C.

That bill’s lengthy acronym spells out “DRAIN THE SWAMP Act.”

Ernst said that not a single government agency’s office space is half-occupied two-plus years on from the COVID-19 pandemic, and she previously called for the Biden administration to sell off unused real estate for taxpayers’ benefit.

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In her letters, Ernst laid out that 90% of telework-eligible federal employees are still working from home and only 6% report they are working on a “full-time basis.” 

Additionally, she wrote that public-sector unions are purportedly “dictating personnel policy” without regard to federal directives from the Office of Management & Budget (OMB), which is running up a massive tab and leading to wastes of time, space and money.

“The union bosses are rushing to lock in last minute, lavish long-term deals with the lame-duck Biden administration—extending beyond President Trump’s next term in office—guaranteeing that bureaucrats can stay at home for another four years or longer,” Ernst wrote in one letter prepped for Office of Personnel Management director Robert Shriver III.

“Apparently, protecting telework perks for public employees is a higher priority than showing up to serve American taxpayers,” she wrote, calling Biden’s submission to union demands “shocking and unacceptable.”

She noted it was a similarly liberal president who vociferously opposed unionization of public employees in the first place, as Democrat Franklin Roosevelt wrote in a letter to a union steward declining a 1937 invitation to a national federal employee union convention.

“All government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service,” Roosevelt said.

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“It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with government employee organizations.”

“The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress.”

Ernst suggested federal workers and their union representatives have forgotten Roosevelt’s warning, citing the last-minute push to ratify collective bargaining agreements and telework privilege pacts before President-elect Donald Trump can begin his oversight endeavors through DOGE.

Ernst pointed out situations she said show union bosses and career agency management have the “government wrapped around their finger.”

In the letters, she embedded a photo of former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley while he was serving as Biden’s Social Security Administration chief and who was wearing a Captain America T-shirt alongside a purported union official at a party.

Ernst cited news reports of O’Malley going to Florida to party with union members before endorsing a contract preventing easy reduction of work-from-home ability.

She said O’Malley spent the trip “crooning” Irish ballads on his guitar and drinking alcohol.

“This buddy-buddy relationship between the Social Security Commissioner and the union bosses representing his workforce during what is supposed to be a negotiation resulted in a contract unbelievably slanted towards the union and against the interests of taxpayers and the mission of the agency,” she said.

In another case, she pointed to Housing & Urban Development employees who may not have deserved the TFUT or “taxpayer-funded union time” they filed for.

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Former Baltimore mayor and ex-Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (Reuters)

One such worker successfully claimed compensation while in jail.

Ernst demanded the agencies report data on TFUT claims and payouts, unused or underused real estate holdings designated for use through collective bargaining, and any cases of each agency permitting unions or their employees to use department property at a discount or for free.

“Giving bureaucrats another four-year vacation from the office is unacceptable. Bureaucrats have had enough gap years—it’s time to get them back to work,” she said.

Fox News’ Julia Johnson contributed to this report.