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Let's Cut Some Spending: $1.7 billion for empty buildings
- ForAmerica
- Mar 23, 2023
- 1 min read
Updated: May 19, 2023
Remember the absolutely critical Omnibus spending bill Congress muscled through at the end of last year? It was 4,000 pages that no one read that cost taxpayers $1.7 trillion.
In our Let's Cut Some Spending series, ForAmerica will chronicle parts of the 2021 and 2022 spending bills from a variety of sources that you probably don't know about - programs, grants, and spending of all kinds that should have never happened in the first place and many that are still happening.
Today's offering: $1.7 billion to maintain empty buildings!
The Heartlander reports:
“The federal government spends $1.7 billion annually to maintain 770,000 empty buildings.
The government maintains these empty buildings as agencies lease or buy new space. The Government Accountability Office claimed the government holds more property than it needs and uses unreliable data for property management decisions.”
It shouldn’t be surprising that empty headed politicians and bureaucrats thought it smart to spend that much money on empty buildings - by emptying our pockets.
Man, this article really hits home about how ridiculous it is to spend $1.7 billion for buildings no one’s using. Reminds me of wasted budgets in my own city - empty schools just rotting away because nobody bothered to repurpose them. By the way, while looking into budget transparency I ended up Googling things like how to contact Afterpay to settle small bills - kinda off topic but shows how people try to manage their finances when the government can’t. Practical tip: audit your local government’s real estate roster, then petition to convert empty buildings into community centers or affordable housing.