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After Telework Surge, Federal Buildings Remain Largely Empty

After Telework Surge, Federal Buildings Remain Largely Empty

Authored by Susan Crabtree via RealClear Wire,

More than two years after the…

Published

3 months ago

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After Telework Surge, Federal Buildings Remain Largely Empty

Authored by Susan Crabtree via RealClear Wire,

More than two years after the Biden administration called on all federal agencies to create plans to bring employees who teleworked during the COVID pandemic back to the office, the vast majority of Washington, D.C.’s federal buildings are still sprawling expanses of empty, echoing hallways and offices. 

In fact, 17 of 24 federal agencies use an estimated 25% or less of their headquarters’ office capacity, according to an updated survey by the General Accounting Office, a government agency that provides auditing and investigative services for Congress. 

The survey showed that all federal buildings except the Treasury were operating at or below 31% office occupancy, with some far below that level, during the period surveyed. The Treasury Department has done better than most in seeing its employees return to work. Forty percent of the Treasury Department was back to work when the GAO survey was conducted. 

The Social Security Administration and the Housing and Urban Development offices were both at 7% occupancy; the Small Business Administration was at 9%; the Office of Personnel Management notched in at 12%; and the Transportation Department was at 14% occupancy. The General Services Administration, which manages all federal buildings, was operating at 11%, as was the Department of Agriculture. 

The U.S. Agency for International Development is located in the expansive Ronald Reagan Building, the second largest government building after the Pentagon, with 3.1 million square feet of office space on 11 acres. USAID’s occupancy was at 23%. The Department of Homeland Security, which under Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ leadership has come under fire from Republicans for failing to secure the southern border, was at 31% occupancy during the periods the GAO surveyed.

Although many private companies, which must answer to shareholders, have offloaded their pricey office space as many employees have shifted to telework, the U.S. government continues to pay a hefty price tag for office space while allowing liberal remote work. Federal agencies spend roughly $2 billion a year to operate and maintain federal office buildings and an additional $5 billion to lease office buildings, according to the GAO. 

The government auditing agency recently released its updated occupancy findings to Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst. The report sampled federal agencies’ use of office space across a three-week period earlier this year. 

“This Christmas season, I’m calling on Biden’s bureaucrats to deck the agency halls with federal workers or sell off unused space,” Ernst told RealClearPolitics. 

“Four years have passed since COVID temporarily closed federal buildings, but bureaucrats are still failing to show up for work,” she said in a statement. 

Ernst called out a “naughty list of no-shows,” which have taxpayers “on the hook” for paying for their expensive office space. 

“No wonder [Transportation Secretary] Pete Buttigieg can’t address delays for Americans going home for the holidays if he can’t even get his employees to show up to work,” she said. “And while DHS headquarters remains nearly empty, illegal immigrants are filling up sanctuary cities. Ironically, instead of getting the homeless off the streets, no one is even home at HUD.” 

The COVID pandemic’s liberal telework policies have exacerbated low occupancy rates, though federal agencies have vastly underutilized their office space since the early 2000s. Based on its calculations for one of the federal headquarters buildings, the GAO estimated that only 67% of building capacity would be used even if all assigned staff entered the building on a single day. 

“As the country emerges from the pandemic and agencies continue to offer telework as an option, the federal government has a unique opportunity to reconsider how much and what type of office space it needs,” the GAO concluded in a July report. 

Although an official breakdown by agency of the number of workers working remotely at least part-time does not exist, far more government workers have been working remotely since the COVID pandemic. The liberal COVID telework policies have become a catalyst for the need to modernize and downsize the federal real estate portfolio, said Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, a taxpayer watchdog group.

“Federal real property management has been on GAO’s high-risk list since 2003 because the government has had more space than it needs,” he said in an interview. “It’s a matter of establishing what the government needs and where they need to have these headquarters. It really could not be a simpler decision.” 

Schatz and other like-minded watchdogs support a campaign to move some federal office agencies out of D.C. and closer to the people most impacted by the agencies’ policies. Ernst, along with Ohio Republican Rep. Bill Johnson, sponsored a bill in 2022 that would distribute agency headquarters throughout the country and would, according to Ernst and Johnson, provide the added benefit of bringing stable jobs to other parts of the United States.

Schatz said the Biden administration hasn’t signaled whether it would support such a move but is pressing agencies to bring their employees back to work. 

Earlier this fall, facing large numbers of federal workers who were still not coming into the office, the White House privately pushed Cabinet secretaries to bring their employees back, Axios reported. Only about half of Cabinet agencies had achieved the White House’s goals of returning to office work by January. White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients has made returning to the office a priority for both the White House and the broader executive branch and sent a Cabinet-wide memo over the summer urging an end to telework. 

“We are running to in-person work because it is critical to the well-being of our teams and will enable us to deliver better results for the American people,” Zients wrote. 

During an early October Senate hearing, the billions of dollars spent for empty federal office space came under fire. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a West Virginia Republican, voiced deep concerns over wasted resources used to heat, cool, and maintain the underutilized buildings. 

“Each year, it costs billions of taxpayer dollars to operate and maintain these federal buildings, regardless of their utilization,” she said. “This is simply unacceptable.” 

Congress also has passed laws, including the Inflation Reduction Act, giving the General Services Administration, which runs the federal buildings, funds to make buildings more energy efficient and resilient to climate change and to promote the use of low-carbon materials.  

Half of the GSA-managed leases are set to expire by 2027, which Delaware Democratic Sen. Tom Carper said provides an opportunity to downsize the building space. Carper added that DHS is already working to reduce its office footprint in Washington, D.C., by more than 1.2 million square feet. That effort alone would save taxpayers an estimated $1.3 billion over the next 30 years, according to the GSA.

Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics' national political correspondent.

Tyler Durden Fri, 12/22/2023 - 19:30

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Low Iron Levels In Blood Could Trigger Long COVID: Study

Low Iron Levels In Blood Could Trigger Long COVID: Study

Authored by Amie Dahnke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

People with inadequate…

Published

6 hours ago

on

March 9, 2024

By

Low Iron Levels In Blood Could Trigger Long COVID: Study

Authored by Amie Dahnke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

People with inadequate iron levels in their blood due to a COVID-19 infection could be at greater risk of long COVID.

(Shutterstock)

A new study indicates that problems with iron levels in the bloodstream likely trigger chronic inflammation and other conditions associated with the post-COVID phenomenon. The findings, published on March 1 in Nature Immunology, could offer new ways to treat or prevent the condition.

Long COVID Patients Have Low Iron Levels

Researchers at the University of Cambridge pinpointed low iron as a potential link to long-COVID symptoms thanks to a study they initiated shortly after the start of the pandemic. They recruited people who tested positive for the virus to provide blood samples for analysis over a year, which allowed the researchers to look for post-infection changes in the blood. The researchers looked at 214 samples and found that 45 percent of patients reported symptoms of long COVID that lasted between three and 10 months.

In analyzing the blood samples, the research team noticed that people experiencing long COVID had low iron levels, contributing to anemia and low red blood cell production, just two weeks after they were diagnosed with COVID-19. This was true for patients regardless of age, sex, or the initial severity of their infection.

According to one of the study co-authors, the removal of iron from the bloodstream is a natural process and defense mechanism of the body.

But it can jeopardize a person’s recovery.

“When the body has an infection, it responds by removing iron from the bloodstream. This protects us from potentially lethal bacteria that capture the iron in the bloodstream and grow rapidly. It’s an evolutionary response that redistributes iron in the body, and the blood plasma becomes an iron desert,” University of Oxford professor Hal Drakesmith said in a press release. “However, if this goes on for a long time, there is less iron for red blood cells, so oxygen is transported less efficiently affecting metabolism and energy production, and for white blood cells, which need iron to work properly. The protective mechanism ends up becoming a problem.”

The research team believes that consistently low iron levels could explain why individuals with long COVID continue to experience fatigue and difficulty exercising. As such, the researchers suggested iron supplementation to help regulate and prevent the often debilitating symptoms associated with long COVID.

“It isn’t necessarily the case that individuals don’t have enough iron in their body, it’s just that it’s trapped in the wrong place,” Aimee Hanson, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge who worked on the study, said in the press release. “What we need is a way to remobilize the iron and pull it back into the bloodstream, where it becomes more useful to the red blood cells.”

The research team pointed out that iron supplementation isn’t always straightforward. Achieving the right level of iron varies from person to person. Too much iron can cause stomach issues, ranging from constipation, nausea, and abdominal pain to gastritis and gastric lesions.

1 in 5 Still Affected by Long COVID

COVID-19 has affected nearly 40 percent of Americans, with one in five of those still suffering from symptoms of long COVID, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Long COVID is marked by health issues that continue at least four weeks after an individual was initially diagnosed with COVID-19. Symptoms can last for days, weeks, months, or years and may include fatigue, cough or chest pain, headache, brain fog, depression or anxiety, digestive issues, and joint or muscle pain.

Tyler Durden Sat, 03/09/2024 - 12:50

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Walmart joins Costco in sharing key pricing news

The massive retailers have both shared information that some retailers keep very close to the vest.

Published

9 hours ago

on

March 9, 2024

By

As we head toward a presidential election, the presumed candidates for both parties will look for issues that rally undecided voters. 

The economy will be a key issue, with Democrats pointing to job creation and lowering prices while Republicans will cite the layoffs at Big Tech companies, high housing prices, and of course, sticky inflation.

The covid pandemic created a perfect storm for inflation and higher prices. It became harder to get many items because people getting sick slowed down, or even stopped, production at some factories.

Related: Popular mall retailer shuts down abruptly after bankruptcy filing

It was also a period where demand increased while shipping, trucking and delivery systems were all strained or thrown out of whack. The combination led to product shortages and higher prices.

You might have gone to the grocery store and not been able to buy your favorite paper towel brand or find toilet paper at all. That happened partly because of the supply chain and partly due to increased demand, but at the end of the day, it led to higher prices, which some consumers blamed on President Joe Biden's administration.

Biden, of course, was blamed for the price increases, but as inflation has dropped and grocery prices have fallen, few companies have been up front about it. That's probably not a political choice in most cases. Instead, some companies have chosen to lower prices more slowly than they raised them.

However, two major retailers, Walmart (WMT) and Costco, have been very honest about inflation. Walmart Chief Executive Doug McMillon's most recent comments validate what Biden's administration has been saying about the state of the economy. And they contrast with the economic picture being painted by Republicans who support their presumptive nominee, Donald Trump.

Walmart has seen inflation drop in many key areas.

Image source: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Walmart sees lower prices

McMillon does not talk about lower prices to make a political statement. He's communicating with customers and potential customers through the analysts who cover the company's quarterly-earnings calls.

During Walmart's fiscal-fourth-quarter-earnings call, McMillon was clear that prices are going down.

"I'm excited about the omnichannel net promoter score trends the team is driving. Across countries, we continue to see a customer that's resilient but looking for value. As always, we're working hard to deliver that for them, including through our rollbacks on food pricing in Walmart U.S. Those were up significantly in Q4 versus last year, following a big increase in Q3," he said.

He was specific about where the chain has seen prices go down.

"Our general merchandise prices are lower than a year ago and even two years ago in some categories, which means our customers are finding value in areas like apparel and hard lines," he said. "In food, prices are lower than a year ago in places like eggs, apples, and deli snacks, but higher in other places like asparagus and blackberries."

McMillon said that in other areas prices were still up but have been falling.

"Dry grocery and consumables categories like paper goods and cleaning supplies are up mid-single digits versus last year and high teens versus two years ago. Private-brand penetration is up in many of the countries where we operate, including the United States," he said.

Costco sees almost no inflation impact

McMillon avoided the word inflation in his comments. Costco  (COST)  Chief Financial Officer Richard Galanti, who steps down on March 15, has been very transparent on the topic.

The CFO commented on inflation during his company's fiscal-first-quarter-earnings call.

"Most recently, in the last fourth-quarter discussion, we had estimated that year-over-year inflation was in the 1% to 2% range. Our estimate for the quarter just ended, that inflation was in the 0% to 1% range," he said.

Galanti made clear that inflation (and even deflation) varied by category.

"A bigger deflation in some big and bulky items like furniture sets due to lower freight costs year over year, as well as on things like domestics, bulky lower-priced items, again, where the freight cost is significant. Some deflationary items were as much as 20% to 30% and, again, mostly freight-related," he added.

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Walmart has really good news for shoppers (and Joe Biden)

The giant retailer joins Costco in making a statement that has political overtones, even if that’s not the intent.

Published

10 hours ago

on

March 9, 2024

By

As we head toward a presidential election, the presumed candidates for both parties will look for issues that rally undecided voters. 

The economy will be a key issue, with Democrats pointing to job creation and lowering prices while Republicans will cite the layoffs at Big Tech companies, high housing prices, and of course, sticky inflation.

The covid pandemic created a perfect storm for inflation and higher prices. It became harder to get many items because people getting sick slowed down, or even stopped, production at some factories.

Related: Popular mall retailer shuts down abruptly after bankruptcy filing

It was also a period where demand increased while shipping, trucking and delivery systems were all strained or thrown out of whack. The combination led to product shortages and higher prices.

You might have gone to the grocery store and not been able to buy your favorite paper towel brand or find toilet paper at all. That happened partly because of the supply chain and partly due to increased demand, but at the end of the day, it led to higher prices, which some consumers blamed on President Joe Biden's administration.

Biden, of course, was blamed for the price increases, but as inflation has dropped and grocery prices have fallen, few companies have been up front about it. That's probably not a political choice in most cases. Instead, some companies have chosen to lower prices more slowly than they raised them.

However, two major retailers, Walmart (WMT) and Costco, have been very honest about inflation. Walmart Chief Executive Doug McMillon's most recent comments validate what Biden's administration has been saying about the state of the economy. And they contrast with the economic picture being painted by Republicans who support their presumptive nominee, Donald Trump.

Walmart has seen inflation drop in many key areas.

Image source: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Walmart sees lower prices

McMillon does not talk about lower prices to make a political statement. He's communicating with customers and potential customers through the analysts who cover the company's quarterly-earnings calls.

During Walmart's fiscal-fourth-quarter-earnings call, McMillon was clear that prices are going down.

"I'm excited about the omnichannel net promoter score trends the team is driving. Across countries, we continue to see a customer that's resilient but looking for value. As always, we're working hard to deliver that for them, including through our rollbacks on food pricing in Walmart U.S. Those were up significantly in Q4 versus last year, following a big increase in Q3," he said.

He was specific about where the chain has seen prices go down.

"Our general merchandise prices are lower than a year ago and even two years ago in some categories, which means our customers are finding value in areas like apparel and hard lines," he said. "In food, prices are lower than a year ago in places like eggs, apples, and deli snacks, but higher in other places like asparagus and blackberries."

McMillon said that in other areas prices were still up but have been falling.

"Dry grocery and consumables categories like paper goods and cleaning supplies are up mid-single digits versus last year and high teens versus two years ago. Private-brand penetration is up in many of the countries where we operate, including the United States," he said.

Costco sees almost no inflation impact

McMillon avoided the word inflation in his comments. Costco  (COST)  Chief Financial Officer Richard Galanti, who steps down on March 15, has been very transparent on the topic.

The CFO commented on inflation during his company's fiscal-first-quarter-earnings call.

"Most recently, in the last fourth-quarter discussion, we had estimated that year-over-year inflation was in the 1% to 2% range. Our estimate for the quarter just ended, that inflation was in the 0% to 1% range," he said.

Galanti made clear that inflation (and even deflation) varied by category.

"A bigger deflation in some big and bulky items like furniture sets due to lower freight costs year over year, as well as on things like domestics, bulky lower-priced items, again, where the freight cost is significant. Some deflationary items were as much as 20% to 30% and, again, mostly freight-related," he added.

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