Here's What Government Agencies Wasted Billions on During the Pandemic

Leah Barkoukis | October 06, 2023 9:00 AM

Government agencies spent billions of dollars during the pandemic on lavish office upgrades, including high-end furniture, solar-powered picnic tables, and swanky décor, even as office buildings sat empty because employees were teleworking.

In total, federal agencies spent $3.3 billion on the upgrades between 2020 and 2022, a new watchdog report revealed.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spent $237,960 on roughly 30 solar-powered picnic tables while the vast majority of its workforce stayed home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The State Department paid more than $117,250 for as many as 40 luxurious Ethan Allen leather recliners to fill its embassy building in Islamabad, Pakistan.
And the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency spent $284,000 and $213,828, respectively, to spruce up their mostly empty conference rooms. […]
The taxpayer watchdog OpenTheBooks.com revealed the furniture splurge in a study published Tuesday, which also cited a Government Accountability Office report that found 17 of the 24 federal agencies are using as little as 9% and as much as 49% of their building capacities well into the fourth year of the pandemic. (New York Post)

OpenTheBooks founder and CEO Adam Andrzejewski said the findings reveal the need for more oversight of federal spending.

“As Congress continues to fight over spending, we want to make it clear that there are massive amounts of money being appropriated, spent, wasted and sometimes hidden from the taxpayer,” Andrzejewski told The Post. “In the case of office furniture, most federal headquarters are barely a quarter full on a given workday, and no major agency is at more than half capacity. Yet for some reason we’ve bankrolled another billion dollars in desks, chairs, couches and more — while employees clock in from their own living rooms.”

He continued: “The ‘use it or lose it’ policy encourages unnecessary spending because agencies are penalized, instead [of] rewarded, for not spending all their end-of-year funds. This is just one of the many perverse incentives that drive irresponsible spending in our nation’s Capital — and it has to stop.”