(Washington D.C.) After U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), the chair and founder of the Senate DOGE Caucus, highlighted the issue of a federal workforce that has been chronically absent from the office, President Donald Trump has ordered these absent bureaucrats to return to work full-time.
Monday’s executive action marks the beginning of Ernst’s collaboration with the Trump administration and its Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), aimed at downsizing government, prioritizing taxpayers, and ensuring that Washington D.C. effectively serves the people. “For years, I’ve been exposing the broken federal workforce and fighting to make Washington accountable,” Ernst stated. “With President Trump back in the White House, taxpayers everywhere can see that he is already delivering on his promises to drain the swamp from day one. President Trump and I will gladly tell any bureaucrat who refuses to return to the office, ‘You’re fired.’ Today is a significant step toward getting Washington back to work for the American people, and this is just the beginning.”
In August 2023, Ernst called for investigations into 24 federal departments and agencies to assess the impact of telework on service delivery and response times. In December 2023, she revealed that nearly four years after COVID-19 temporarily closed federal buildings, no government agency was occupying even half of their available office space. She urged the Biden administration to either return federal workers to their offices or sell off unused facilities. In December 2024, Ernst published a detailed report showing how federal bureaucrats have misused telework and locality pay, costing taxpayers billions of dollars.
