GOP Seizes on Musk Plan to Force Federal Workers Back to Office

Ending federal telework is one of the few specific proposals that’s caught Republican lawmakers’ attention among the array of ideas pitched by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s cost-cutting “Department of Government Efficiency.”

Top GOP appropriators and hard-line conservatives have set aside disagreements on spending in favor of cracking down on remote work for federal employees, a practice that has increasingly rankled Republicans since it grew in response to the pandemic. They are now betting on the incoming Trump administration and new legislation to end it.

“That’d be my first cut, right there,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said of remote work proposals. “Focus on people not showing up for work. I mean, when you say they’re ‘teleworking,’ sure they are. Some, maybe.”

For some lawmakers, the point of the anti-telework push is to also shrink the federal workforce, aiming to encourage employees to leave their jobs.

“It will have an effect of accelerating attrition, and that attrition is self-selected,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who’s in line to chair the Senate Commerce, Transportation and Science Committee next Congress.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is set to chair the Appropriations Committee next year, said there would be broad support for measures to bring federal employees “back to work at their work sites, wherever that may be, five days a week.” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said one of the first actions from the administration and Congress will be for federal workers to return to their desks.

While the non-governmental “DOGE” may put a spotlight on those proposals, it doesn’t make it any easier to enact them into law. Republicans were already focused on cutting back on work-from-home arrangements before the pair of Trump allies stepped in. And no one has claimed that any anti-telework proposals would come close to meeting Musk’s promise to slash $2 trillion from the annual $6.75 trillion budget.

Taking aim at telework is “an easy target, because there’s a lot of discussion about it,” including in the private sector, said Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.).

“They’re going to have to come up with a lot more than that to meet the numerical goals that they’re trying to meet,” said Womack, a senior appropriator.

Musk and Ramaswamy have suggested they’d find ways to get federal workers to retire or take early buyouts. Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) said she expects the two Trump advisers to also be looking at what could be handled using AI. “They’ll be able to find ways where a human is more inefficient than a machine,” she said.

Republicans have some unusual allies with D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) and other district officials testifying before Congress this week on their support for the return of federal workers to the office to help revitalize the downtown. Bowser told the House Appropriations Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee that “most federal workers should be in the office most of the time.”

‘Misguided’ Proposal

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), whose state is home to many federal workers, said the discussions around killing telework in the federal workforce are “misguided,” and that there is a role for both telework and in-person work in the federal workforce. He said the way to resolve it is to sit down with representatives of the federal workforce and work out a policy “rather than trying to dictate a policy that could cause serious challenges.”

“I recognize both are needed, but I think in today’s environment, the efficiencies of telework has been well proven,” Cardin said. “It has to be done under responsible management, but I think it has a role in our federal workforce.”

Federal employees spent 79.4% of their working hours in-office in May 2024, excluding remote workers who don’t have a work site to report to, the White House Office of Management and Budget said in a report released in August. There’s a wide range among agencies, though. The figure peaked at 93.7% for Veterans Affairs employees and hit a low point of 37.1% for Housing and Urban Development workers.

The first Senate DOGE Caucus meeting focused on reducing telework as Chair Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) debuted her own findings, which included claims that millions of taxpayer dollars are being wasted on underutilized office space and provided anecdotes such as federal worker calling into a meeting while taking a bubble bath. She’s pushing for Congress to pass several bills, including a bipartisan measure to track telework (S.4043).

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) introduced a package of bills on Wednesday, called the “DOGE Acts,” aiming to freeze federal hiring and salaries, require employees back in office, and set a plan to relocate agencies out of Washington.

But there are hurdles to unraveling telework arrangements. The Social Security Administration reached an agreement with the American Federation of Government Employees that would protect telework until 2029 in a new contract, Bloomberg News reported. The union is already pushing back on Republican claims about the amount of remote workers and touting the benefits of flexibility.

“If you suddenly take away telework and remote work, you’re going to be punishing the very categories of people that we’ve been trying to get,” Daniel Horowitz, deputy legislative director at AFGE, said, pointing to military spouses. “A sudden reversal of these policies would be extremely destructive.”