[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 166 (Wednesday, November 2, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H7253-H7254]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CIVILIAN PROPERTY REALIGNMENT ACT
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from California (Mr. Denham) is
recognized for 30 minutes.
Mr. DENHAM. Mr. Speaker, I am here this afternoon to talk about H.R.
1734, the Civilian Property Realignment Act. Here we have an
opportunity to not only cut waste, but also to create jobs and to bring
in new revenue without raising taxes. Here's an opportunity for
Republicans and Democrats to agree and send the President actually
something he is asking for.
What the Civilian Property Realignment Act would do would be to have
greater oversight over leasing authority. We would also have
redevelopment of underutilized property, the best use possible, and
combine agencies. Where you may have 50 percent of an agency in one
building, 50 percent in another, we're going to combine them into one
agency.
And then we're going to sell off the things we just don't need,
properties that we have around the entire Nation, some of which have
sat vacant, some of them are declared excess, underutilized, sell off
the things we just don't need.
And then, finally, we want to create transparency. We want to shrink
the size of government by creating transparency, showing how many
employees are going to be housed in which buildings, and before we go
out and lease new space or buy new space actually let people know
before we go out and hire new employees. This is the best opportunity,
I believe, to shrink the size of government.
I want to go through these one by one. First of all, oversight of
leasing authority. We held a hearing several months ago. The Security
Exchange Commission went out over a weekend and secured 1 million
square feet over the next 10 years at the cost of $550 million. Over
half a billion dollars of taxpayer dollars were committed on a weekend
with no oversight, with no authority, and today we still have a vacant
space because the employees that may have been hired have never been
hired, and there's no proposal to ever hire the employees, yet
taxpayers are now on the hook for $550 million.
We need new oversight. We need greater oversight. The SEC, the
Securities and Exchange Commission, we have now pulled back their
oversight, but this is happening in many different areas of the
bureaucracy. Many different agencies have this authority today and
still have the ability to go out and secure these types of leases. It
is time to bring it all under one department. GSA has the opportunity
to manage all of our leases, all of our portfolios, and make sure that
we are actually making sound business decisions. What a philosophy that
is for government--actually see what we need, what agencies have how
many employees, what are their leasing needs, have the transparency and
the oversight before we go secure a new lease.
Redevelopment--we need to redevelop some of these properties. The Old
Post Office right down the street here about a block away from the
White House, a property that we had built in the late 1800s, it's a
beautiful property. It's one of the tallest buildings in the capital
region. It has a big clock. It is a nice historic building. That's one
we don't want to sell off. But rather than spend $6\1/2\ million every
year in upkeep, rather than have this vacant building that could be
utilized, why not redevelop it? Why not make that a showpiece? Why not
allow constituents and visitors to the Washington, D.C., area to
actually go up into this national monument, go up into the clock tower
and be able to take in one of the greatest views that our country has
to offer? And let's do it and make a profit. We have offers coming in
now from Trump, Waldorf Astoria, and Marriott Properties that all want
to redevelop this property, create hundreds of jobs in the short term
just in the redevelopment process, but also create hundreds of jobs in
the long term by making sure that we have an employment base for years
to come in this capital region.
But this isn't just about Washington, D.C. We have properties like
this across the Nation. If it's a historic property, then let's
redevelop it. Let's make sure that the infrastructure is there, done by
a private investor that is going to go out and redevelop this property
and then have the long-term job effect afterwards. It can be done, it
can be replicated, this one jobs investment.
The companies that are talking about moving into the Old Post Office
is $140 million total private investment, $100 million in materials,
300 immediate jobs. If you go around the D.C. area, you can see that we
could use the 300 jobs just in this one project.
{time} 1720
Then another 275 permanent jobs for year in, year out in this one
beautiful new hotel that would be redeveloped. That's $11.2 million in
annual revenues to the D.C. area. This is a way to get Republicans and
Democrats to agree on something that not only creates jobs, not only
gets rid of waste in $6.5 million that we spend every year just in
operating costs anyway, but get a property moving again in the right
way.
We also need to combine agencies, collocate. There are too many
properties out there where we have 25 percent utilization, 50 percent
utilization. Why wouldn't we have close to 100 percent utilization on
every property? You would in business. There's no business
[[Page H7254]]
that wants to keep vacant office space, vacant warehouse space; but in
government, because we don't have agencies talking to each other, we
have vacant office space and vacant warehouse space across the entire
Nation.
Here's an opportunity to do more with less. We have an opportunity
to, in courthouse sharing, we have waste, 946,000 extra square feet,
which was constructed because of lack of sharing. The number of
courtrooms needed is 27 of the 33 courtrooms, which would have been
reduced by a total of 126 if all we did was just share. But this is one
example. Again, this goes across the entire bureaucracy across the
United States. Combining agencies, collocating, getting to 100 percent
utilization rate is something we ought to all strive for.
But I think one of the biggest areas, not only for redevelopment and
jobs, but to bring in revenue--there is a lot of talk out there about
taxes. If you really want to bring in revenue that Republicans and
Democrats can agree on, let's sell off some of those things that we
just don't need, properties that we have sat on for decades, properties
that we may have bought at one time or developed at one time because we
actually had a purpose for using them.
But there's no accountability, no efficiency to be able to say at a
certain point that this property is just not needed; it's not being
utilized; it hasn't been developed. It's going to cost us millions of
dollars every year in operating costs. It's going to cost us billions
of dollars to do tenant improvements.
We don't look at all of our properties across the Nation. We don't
even look at our asset portfolio by agency. Let's start taking a look
at the 1.4 million properties, buildings that we have across the Nation
that your Federal Government owns that utilizes taxpayer dollars and
make a business decision: Do we need it now? Is it being used
efficiently? And can we sell off some of the things that we just don't
need?
We've already identified 14,000 excess properties--``excess'' meaning
we don't need them today. Let's start by selling those off. But then
let's look at some big ticket items. Rather than giving the Presidio
back to California or to San Francisco, rather than doing a sweetheart
deal for one city or one State, selling off big billion dollar
properties to New York, let's do a competitive process that affects all
of our taxpayers, that actually brings revenue back to our Treasury and
reduces our debt.
And along the way, as we're selling off these properties, the private
individual that buys it or the company that's redeveloping it is going
to reinvest not only in the property, but in the community. You can
generate millions of jobs just by creating the redevelopment across the
entire Nation. So there's a great opportunity with our property sale as
well.
And then we also need oversight. I mean, there has been a huge lack
in oversight across the Nation. One of the glaring examples that I've
seen is in my home State of California, a courthouse that was proposed
over a decade ago. Now, in 2000 we had 60 judges, with a proposal to
add about 20 more judges. They were going to build a new courthouse.
About $400 million it was going to be to build this new courthouse.
We also spent millions of dollars acquiring this new piece of
property that is in a beautiful area of downtown, redeveloped all
around it; but it is a hole in the ground. For the last decade, we have
not done it because we haven't hired new judges; in fact, we have fewer
judges now. And across the Nation there is this new policy to actually
commingle, share courtroom space. So we've got two courtrooms in the
L.A. area that neither one is a hundred percent occupied. We have space
there just for individuals; but if we did sharing, we could actually
get rid of one of those two courthouses. But instead, we're going to
obligate a half a billion dollars to build a brand-new court site when
we're not utilizing the other two court sites that we have today.
We need greater oversight so that we can look at all of these
properties, the stimulus package that we had at one time and the money
that's still being spent out there and actually use them for shovel-
ready projects that will create jobs today. This little courthouse is
going to spend a half a billion dollars on courtrooms that we don't
need. We need greater oversight.
If we want to really move this country forward, if we want to get
Republicans and Democrats to agree, if we want to get both parties in
both Houses to work on something together, if you want to send
something to the President that the President is actually asking for
that creates jobs, not just numbers out there or long term, that
creates jobs today, something that's going to bring in revenue--we know
we need revenue, we know we've got a huge debt that we've got to pay
off--immediate revenue within the first year, over $15 billion within
the next decade. And I think that that is a very conservative estimate,
that we have a chance to sell quite a bit more than that itself.
And then, lastly, cutting waste. With one bill we can cut waste, we
can create jobs, and we can create revenue with both parties agreeing
to something that will move our country forward.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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