Sen. Joni Ernst has filed the Disposing of Inactive Structures and Properties by Offering for Sale And Lease (DISPOSAL) Act to force the sale of underused federal buildings and cut through the red tape that keeps them empty. The plan puts six prime Washington, D.C. properties on the auction block and creates a faster path for future sales so taxpayers stop carrying the weight of ghost buildings. This is pitched as a straightforward move to return unused real estate to productive use and shore up government finances.
The bill names specific targets: the Frances Perkins Federal Building, home to the Department of Labor; the James V. Forrestal Building at the Department of Energy; the Theodore Roosevelt Federal Building housing the Office of Personnel Management; the Robert C. Weaver Federal Building, previously HUD headquarters; the Department of Agriculture South Building; and the Hubert H. Humphrey Federal Building, where the Department of Health and Human Services is headquartered. These are central D.C. parcels that could bring immediate revenue if sold or leased to private buyers. Putting them on the market is meant to send a clear message that the federal estate will be managed like any other public asset.
Ernst has been blunt about the waste and the optics. “Despite President Trump calling federal employees back to work, vacant government buildings could easily be mistaken as future locations for Spirit Halloween stores,” she said. She also emphasized that her plan “immediately lists six prime pieces of D.C. real estate on the auction block and slashes through pointless regulations to fast-track the sale of the government’s graveyard of lifeless real estate to generate hundreds of millions of dollars and save taxpayers billions.”
Ernst, who founded the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Caucus, first highlighted the problem with a “naughty list of no-show federal agencies” after the pandemic years exposed how large parts of the federal footprint were unused. Her office points to roughly 7,700 vacant federal buildings nationwide and another 2,265 that are mostly empty. That scale makes the issue less an isolated fix and more a national inventory problem that demands a policy response.
Financially the drain is clear. The Office of Management and Budget reported operating costs for underutilized federal buildings at about $81.346 million annually, and the General Services Administration has flagged deferred maintenance backlogs that already top $6 billion and are projected to climb much higher in coming years. The GSA has identified hundreds of “non-core” properties that could be candidates for disposal, but current procedures mean sales move at a glacial pace. Ernst’s bill aims to change that math by mandating quicker action and putting real deadlines on disposal.
Conditions inside some of these structures have become embarrassing and unsafe. Mold, cockroaches and undrinkable water have been reported in multiple federal buildings, creating liability and costing money without delivering public value. Selling or repurposing these sites could remove long-term maintenance liabilities and let private hands rehabilitate or redevelop them faster than the government can.
The DISPOSAL Act would also streamline future disposals by allowing up to 20 additional federal buildings to be sold each year and by charging the GSA chief with deciding whether a sale or a ground lease is in the “best interests of the United States.” That approach balances urgency with discretion and removes procedural hurdles that now slow transactions. The goal is straightforward: get properties back into active, taxable use and stop pouring funds into empty buildings.
President Trump has made trimming federal bloat and returning accountability to government a central theme of his administration, and DOGE is part of that push. “We have hundreds of thousands of federal workers who have not been showing up to work,” he said. “My administration will reclaim power from this unaccountable bureaucracy, and we will restore true democracy to America again. Any federal bureaucrat who resists this change will be removed from office immediately.”
Ernst points to prior wins to show the idea works in practice. Her efforts helped compel the sale of the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, which once held a massive footprint but only housed a handful of workers, and other federal properties have been shown to function poorly as office space for modern needs. Reports of a nearly empty HUD headquarters and offices left with old business cards highlight how the system lost touch with efficient space management, and the DISPOSAL Act is pitched as a common sense corrective.
This bill follows a June proposal from Ernst that targeted six federal buildings for sale with projected revenue of at least $400 million while cutting roughly $2.9 billion in overdue maintenance obligations. The new DISPOSAL Act aims to broaden and accelerate that effort, making disposals routine instead of exceptional. If enacted, it would put practical pressure on a sprawling federal real estate portfolio to behave more like a managed asset and less like a liability.
