Why Your Tax Dollars Fund Empty Office Buildings

In this episode of The Fiscal Policy Podcast, Lucas and Luna dig into a specific and costly problem in public spending: the federal government's sprawling real estate portfolio. The US government is the largest property owner in the country, with over 250,000 buildings. But the Government Accountability Office reports that dozens of agencies are using less than 25 percent of their office space, while still paying full maintenance and utility costs. Lucas walks through the numbers on a few specific buildings in Washington, DC, and explains why the government can't easily sell them off — political pressure, historic designations, and a famously broken disposal process. Luna questions whether the private sector could manage these assets better, and Lucas highlights a pilot program that let the Department of Energy lease out unused space. It's a concrete look at how bureaucratic inertia and misaligned incentives keep the government paying for square footage it doesn't need. #FederalRealEstate #GovernmentSpending #TaxDollars #EmptyBuildings #GAO #OfficeSpace #PublicSector #Bureaucracy #RealEstatePortfolio #WashingtonDC #DepartmentOfEnergy #HistoricPreservation #GSA #LeaseVsOwn #FiscalPolicy #Economics #FexingoBusiness #BusinessPodcast Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo