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Floor Speech

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Ms. ERNST. Mr. President, Uncle Sam is the Nation's largest landlord. Yet he will never win a round of Monopoly, the classic board game where players try to make money and avoid going bankrupt by buying, renting, and selling property.

That is because Uncle Sam, who is already $37 trillion in debt, refuses to sell off unused and unneeded properties that are costing tens of millions of dollars a year to maintain.

Many of Uncle Sam's properties are also fixer-uppers, requiring billions of dollars in much needed renovations and overdue upgrades, some of which are listed on this board.

Holding on to unaffordable properties that are nearly vacant while being just a roll or two away from going bankrupt is not only a losing strategy in Monopoly but also a bad game plan in real life.

But Uncle Sam gets away with it because Washington plays by its own set of rules. And no matter how you roll the dice, ``Washington-opoly'' is a losing game for taxpayers.

To demonstrate, why don't we go ahead and play a round.

OK. That was my attempt to roll the dice--so three. We rolled a three. One, two, three.

OK. We landed on the Department of Agriculture, South Building in Washington, DC. And guess what, folks. It is owned by good old Uncle Sam.

Let's look at the stats for the USDA South Building. Seventy-eight percent of this building isn't even being used on a day-to-day basis. Yet we are paying more than $11 million for utilities every single year, and the building requires $1.7 billion for repairs and upgrades.

We could hold on to this property and pay these costs for a nearly empty building or we could sell it and make $261 million or more.

What would you do?

Well, Uncle Sam has decided to keep it and is passing along the costs to taxpayers. So let's roll again. OK. Two. We got two.

Let's see. One, two. Great.

We landed on Community Chest. So let's pick a card. Community Chest. Pay $818 million for unused property. That is right, folks. Every year, Uncle Sam pays out over $81 million maintaining underutilized offices. This includes nearly 7,700 vacant buildings and another 2,265 that are largely empty.

No wonder the nonpartisan Public Buildings Reform Board says Washington's ``wasteful real estate practices would not endure for so long in a private sector company.''

But when playing ``Washington-opoly,'' Uncle Sam doesn't pay the costs for his wasteful decisions; you do.

How about we take one more turn? Six. One, two, three, four, five, and six. This time we landed on Chance. So we get to pick another card. So there we go. There is our Chance card. Pass the For Sale Act and advance to Go.

Folks, that is exactly the type of Chance we need to protect taxpayers. Selling off Uncle Sam's unneeded property has long been tied up by overly restrictive redtape and bureaucratic barriers.

To revamp Washington's real estate rules, I introduced the For Sale Act. Passing this bill will put six pieces of prime property in the Nation's Capital on the auction block immediately. Selling just these spots will bring in at least $400 million, while also canceling costs, including $2.9 billion in overdue maintenance.

This is just the first step in downsizing Uncle Sam's unused, unneeded, and unaffordable real estate holdings. To any interested potential buyers, you can build a house or even a hotel on these properties and earn rent just like Monopoly. But best of all, taxpayers finally get to advance to Go and collect $400 million. That, folks, is how you win the game.

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