Look around, here today and maybe gone tomorrow.
Mickey Leland federal building
Billionaire Elon Musk’s chainsaw diet for the U.S. government could shutter near 450 federal offices across Texas that do anything from assisting ailing veterans to answering questions about retirement and disability benefits, records show.
The closures, which also could include as many as 25 San Antonio properties, would gut the government’s ability to deliver vital services Texans access daily, critics charge. Sites on the chopping block include offices of the Social Security Administration, the Farm Service Agency and the Small Business Administration along with Veterans Administration facilities, according to a federal website listing holdings by the General Services Administration, the government’s real estate arm.
“Elon Musk is on an authoritarian rampage through the federal government,” said Rob Weissman, co-president of watchdog group Public Citizen, which at press time has filed at least three lawsuits to rein in the billionaire Trump donor’s DOGE, or Department of Government Efficiency.
“While Musk tried to say that this is all about improving efficiency, it’s not efficient to get rid of government offices that directly serve the public and play an important function,” Weissman added. “It’s completely arbitrary, dangerous and puts the cost back on all of us.”
As evidence of the closures’ unintended consequences, critics point to the Musk’s downsizing efforts at the Department of Energy, which were paused over fears they could affect the nation’s nuclear defense programs.
Citing communications from Trump administration officials, the Washington Post reports that DOGE’s plans to slash government spending include eliminating half of all federal nonmilitary real estate nationwide. Those cuts are planned on top of personnel reductions that have already taken place, including a mass firing of thousands of probationary employees on the job for fewer than two years.
[…]
Should Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency carry through with its plans, Texas would be hit especially hard. The Lone Star State is home to 894 federal offices, at least 50 of them in San Antonio, according to the GSA’s online inventory. That means up to 447 statewide could be on Musk’s chopping block.
Four people with knowledge of internal GSA talks told the Post that the property selloff is part of DOGE’s effort to force federal field workers to quit by decimating morale.
“We’ve heard from them that they want to make the buildings so crappy that people will leave,” one senior GSA official told the paper. “I think that’s the larger goal here, which is bring everybody back, the buildings are going to suck, their commutes are going to suck.”
Trinity University economist David Macpherson said a widespread closure of government offices would result in a glut of vacant space across San Antonio and other affected cities. However, he said the larger impact would come from the hemorrhaging of government employees, whose salaries and buying dollars play a significant role in local economies.
“It will increase unemployment, decrease spending and harm the city,” he said. “Economically, it can’t possibly do any good.”
The story says there’s at least 50 federal buildings in San Antonio, housing some 70 agencies. I don’t know what the comparable figure is for Houston – that GSA website allows you to search by state or Congressional district, but not by city or county – but it’s got to be larger than that. It sure would be nice to know what kind of effect we might be looking at. We know that Republicans won’t care, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t.
We should start telling people that the MAGAs are responsible for all the job losses.
They do need working people to give up something to give tax breaks to billionaires and multi-national companies.
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I’m no fan of DOGE or Musk, but the GSA has been trying to liquidate or auction off federal government property and/or reduce/eliminate the rent paid to building owners (who are leasing to govt agencies) for a very, very, very long time. The building (and the land underneath) I’ve worked in for 28+/- years is fully occupied (in fact, ‘overoccupied’) and outright owned by the Fed’s, so it’s ‘safe’, …but federal government real estate holdings isn’t much different from a profit-loss position than that of HISD… whole lotta real estate owned/rented and not a whole lotta ROI.
C.L.
Until it affects you?
Give it time….it will.
In the meantime…all of these “savings” will do the same as “trickle down economics” has done for decades….. why aren’t Republicans interested in trickle up?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-up_economics
I know that many buildings probably have leases that should be honored.
If there are federal employees there, where do they go? It makes more sense to eliminate employees who have been employed for an extended period as they make more money and probably are not that much more productive, if any.
It may take a long for those 19-year-old high school graduates to figure that out.
If you feel like you must eliminate some employees, doesn’t it make more sense to evaluate what positions aren’t necessary and / or who is and isn’t doing a good job, rather than arbitrarily throwing out whoever is too old (or too young, or has red hair, or just looks funny, or is “probationary” because they just got promoted, presumably for doing a good job)?
With these bozos the destruction is the point. It sure makes a big impression, but it’s going to cost a whole lot more to put things back together.