As America turns 250, Congress lets our icons fade
by Edward C. Forst, Matt Kelly and Jeffrey D. DeBoer · The Washington TimesOPINION:
As the United States approaches its 250th birthday, Congress is rightfully haggling over federal spending, parsing billions of dollars in search of savings.
Yet amid that debate, our legislators are neglecting something far more visible: icons of the American republic. These are our classically designed structures, embodying our legacy and telling our origin story through design.
At a moment meant to celebrate national strength and permanence, the government is depriving one of its largest real estate portfolios of investment, eroding value and driving up long-term costs for taxpayers.
Consider a simple benchmark. The Empire State Building was completed in just 410 days using 1920s technology — an extraordinary demonstration of aligned incentives, coordinated investment and execution excellence. More than a century later, the federal government cannot replace an elevator system in that same time frame.
That gap is not about engineering limits or a failure of the General Services Administration; it is the result of a system that delays decisions, fragments accountability and misallocates resources.
At its core, this is a structural standoff between Congress and the GSA, the agency responsible for managing one of the largest and most diverse real estate portfolios in the world: 360 million square feet across roughly 8,000 owned and leased buildings. The GSA is tasked with reinvigorating these icons, but its access to resources is severely restricted and political incentives are misaligned.
That misalignment is evident in the way the federal government leases space from private landlords. Payments are made reliably, buildings are kept to market standards, and investments are deployed on schedule.
When the government owns buildings, however, lawmakers often restrict or delay access to the funds required for basic upkeep. The disparity is striking. Lease obligations are treated as fixed and dependable, while funding for federally owned properties is subject to uncertainty and deliberate delay by our legislators.
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Washington meets its obligations as a tenant while shirking its responsibilities as an owner.
Federally owned buildings are deteriorating or sitting vacant. Routine maintenance is delinquent, investment is postponed, and what should be manageable repairs become large-scale capital projects. The backlog of needed work is now nearly $50 billion and continues to grow.
The underlying issue is misappropriation. Agencies pay into a centralized system intended to operate and maintain federal facilities, yet those funds have been increasingly cannibalized. Over time, billions of dollars have been redirected elsewhere, breaking the link between agency needs and workspace reanimation.
The same dysfunction is evident in the GSA’s own headquarters. Its flagship 500,000-square-foot property was completed in 1917, after just two years of construction. Today, roughly 40% of that building is deemed uninhabitable, awaiting approval for repairs, even as the government brings federal employees back into the office.
Under the current system, procedure overrides performance, and resources are not deployed at the speed required to preserve value. Before the GSA can undertake $3.9 million in minor repairs across its portfolio, it must navigate a multilayered approval process involving authorizing committees and appropriations.
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Securing that approval alone can take more than 400 days, nearly as long as it took to build the Empire State Building. Only after that delay can work begin.
The private sector offers a useful contrast. Large property owners deploy capital dynamically, prioritize preventive maintenance and evaluate assets throughout their life cycles. Delayed spending is value destruction. In the federal system, delays are built into the process.
We need alignment among resources, incentives and execution authority. Allowing timely access to maintenance funding would enable the GSA to preserve asset value, support workforce productivity and engage private partners.
The GSA urges Congress to eliminate the gap between agency rent collections and the funds allocated to them. Without that shift, deterioration will continue and taxpayers will pay more to salvage a real estate portfolio that never should have been allowed to fail.
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With this critical backdrop, the GSA is accelerating its disposition of unneeded properties and its densification efforts at a record pace.
The lesson of the Empire State Building is not nostalgia; it is urgency. The U.S. once demonstrated that it could build at speed and scale. For America’s 250th birthday and for its future, the government must prove it can maintain what it already owns while fortifying and reanimating its federal legacy.
• Edward C. Forst is administrator of the U.S. General Services Administration. Matt Kelly is chairman and CEO of JBG Smith. Jeffrey D. DeBoer is president and CEO of the Real Estate Roundtable.