[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 12]
[House]
[Pages 16491-16492]
[From the U.S. 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 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

[[Page 16492]]

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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