Imagine America if federal officials relocated federal agencies from Washington, D.C. to Tennessee, Ohio, Michigan, and other states.
That’s what would happen if a bill that U.S. Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and U.S. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri proposed ever passes into law.
The two senators announced the bill, called the Helping Infrastructure Restore the Economy Act, otherwise known as HIRE, in a press release Wednesday. The legislation would move most federal agencies out of Washington, D.C. and into economically-distressed regions across the country.
Members of Blackburn’s staff said they could not answer The Tennessee Star’s questions about the legislation Wednesday. Members of Hawley’s staff, meanwhile, did not return repeated requests for comment.
But in a press release, Blackburn said “moving agencies outside of Washington, D.C. both boosts local economies and lowers costs.”
“This legislation would enable Americans across the country to have greater access to good jobs. Tennesseans would greatly benefit from having portions of the Department of Education in the Volunteer State,” Blackburn said.
“It is my hope that the HIRE Act will quickly pass the Senate.”
Hawley, in the same press release, said too much taxpayer money goes to Washington, D.C.
“That’s a big part of the problem with Washington: they’re too removed from the rest of America,” Hawley said.
“The HIRE Act will move policymakers directly into the communities they serve, creating thousands of jobs for local communities and saving taxpayers billions of dollars along the way.”
As the press release noted, the federal Bureau of Land Management recently announced plans to move to Colorado, while two Department of Agriculture agencies are moving to Kansas City. According to the language of the law, the HIRE Act would move 90 percent of the positions in 10 executive departments from D.C. to economically distressed regions in the following states:
• Agriculture to Missouri
• Commerce to Pennsylvania
• Education to Tennessee
• Energy to Kentucky
• Health and Human Services to Indiana
• Housing Administration to Ohio
• Interior to New Mexico
• Labor to West Virginia
• Transportation to Michigan
• Veterans Affairs to South Carolina
HIRE also would require that the federal government move most non-department agencies to economically distressed regions that have a geographic nexus to the agency, according to a press release.
“Moving agencies also is cheaper long term. Lease costs typically are lower outside D.C. Relocating agencies in the Department of Agriculture to Kansas City, according to one report, will save $300 million over 15 years,” the press release said.
“That report also notes that moving agencies outside D.C. similarly saves costs by decreasing employee attrition. Retaining quality employees is easier when costs of living are low, commute times are short, and federal salaries are high relative to the region.”
– – –
Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
You walk into any government office in the DC area and I would bet you a shiny new Roosevelt dime that in the vast majority of those offices you will see far more empty cubicles than full ones.
Accelerated work schedule – where you “work” 10 hours and get a 3-day weekend every week. Or work 5 10-hour days one week, have a regular weekend, then 3 10-hour days the next week and have a 4 day weekend every other week. Just try and get 2 or 3 employees together for a meeting in that environment – good luck.
What’s more, telecommuting has been all the rage there for years now. And why not? You can sit on your dead behind doing nothing at home just as well as you can at the office and you don’t have to pay for the commute. The one saving grace is that the (very) few people that are carrying your weight, and everyone else like you, don’t have to listen to the whining about how underpaid and overworked you are.
The long and the short of it is this: the Federal government workforce, and most of its contractor workforce, are overwhelmingly Communists, er, Democrats. And yes, they will bring their values(?) with them, guaranteed.
This proposal is fully consistent with the demographic replacement program placing refugees in predominantly rural strongholds of conservatism. Minneapolis aka Little Somalia, Portland (Maine) – ditto, Twin Falls (ID), Lincoln (NE) and, yes, Nashville. Place the refugees there, on the government dime, and they will vote Communist, er, Democrat for the next 200 years. Same deal.
How about this instead Sen. Blackburn: review any number of the GAO studies that have been performed over the decades which concluded, in no uncertain terms, waste and abuse of outrageous proportions. Hold the agencies at fault accountable, make them improve or lose their budgets. In other words, do something constructive rather than photo ops and identity politic fluff pieces.
Yeah, right. Increasingly, I think Sen. Blackburn is going to be a one term senator, if she doesn’t get recalled beforehand.
You counter her proposal, something possible easy to try, with trial cases, with something that is absolutely impossible (not even a plausible hypothesis). Hey, we need to do a Washington DC Deep State self-improvement program. (“Hold the agencies at fault accountable, make them improve or lose their budgets.”) Yeah, that’s the ticket. What hoot!
I don’t mind ICE coming to Tennessee. DC can keep the rest.
Yes, imagine America if the swamp was spread throughout the whole country instead of just the DC area. Not a good thought at all. Scary, actually. No thank you, Marsha.
Great, more Liberals to flood into Tennessee and tell us what’s wrong with the way we choose to live.
Why are “conservative Republicans” bringing unconstitutional federal agencies to camp out in our state instead of eliminating them? Is it to make the federally-forced “Common Core is state-led” lie pushed by Frist, Woodson and Haslam become true?
OH NO!!! MARSHA DON’T DO IT!!!!
Isn’t it bad enough we will have hundreds moving here from New York City with AllianceBernstein and hundreds more from Cypress, California with Mitsubishi without any tests of these individuals to determine whether they carry with them the political pathologies that typically afflict the residents of those cities. Now you want to pass legislation that will result in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of federal bureaucrats moving here from heavens knows where – not that it makes much difference since they mostly harbor the same pathologies as their ideological brethren in Cypress and New York City no matter where they are from but especially from Washington, D. C. without any political vetting as well.
This trend is no friend of conservatives who love this state. Do you want us to go the way of Virginia and North Carolina by turning a safely Republican state into a swing state or, and I can barely type this it upsets me so, A DEMOCRATIC STATE? Marsha please think again, DON’T DO IT!!!
“Do you want us to go the way of Virginia and North Carolina”
——————-
She may not see it, but that’s the plan, make no mistake. WV is essentially a vassal state, KY was already purple and the long knives have always been out for Gov. Bevin. GA is close and FL is all but lost.
You don’t have to win the state, just the major metro area(s.)