Stephen Miller says the president-elect will order federal workers ’to get back into the office … or find another line of work.’
President-elect Donald Trump will order federal workers who have been working at home to return to the office, said his top adviser, Stephen Miller, in a recent interview.
“When Donald Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20 and that new golden age of America begins, he’s going to tell the federal workers of this country who your viewers pay for to get back into the office and do their jobs or find another line of work,” Miller told Fox News host Jesse Watters on Thursday evening.
Miller was named by Trump last month to serve as his deputy chief of staff for policy. Previously, he served in Trump’s administration as a senior adviser.
In his interview, he pointed to a report released by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) that found only 6 percent of federal employees reporting in-person on a full-time basis and that about a third of the federal workforce is working fully remotely.
In Ernst’s report, released Thursday, about “90 percent of federal employees telework.” Before the COVID-19 pandemic, that figure stood at 3 percent. “Not a single headquarters of a major agency in Washington is even half-full,” the report found, adding that the “average occupancy is just 12 percent.”
In a summary of the report released by her office, Ernst said that she believes the practice has led to “service backlogs and delays” as well as “unanswered phone calls and emails.”
She also backed a downsizing of the federal government by allowing unnecessary leases to expire and the auctioning off of unused office space, as well as the consolidation of offices.
The senator said in a statement that federal workers “need to return to work” because it’s “happening on the taxpayers’ dime and at the expense of veterans, seniors, small business owners, and Americans in need of competent service from government agencies.”
It comes as tech billionaire Elon Musk and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, the heads of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), met with lawmakers in the Capitol to dismantle or streamline portions of the federal government.
“We’re going to see a lot of change around here in Washington,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters, as Musk, with his young son on his shoulders, breezed by and into the meeting.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) told reporters he would like to see Musk testify before the House Armed Services Committee on the “bloated defense budget.”
“I’d like to see Elon recommend some cuts,” Khanna said. ”Let’s have him testify.”
A top union representing federal workers, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), has pushed back on Musk’s and Ramaswamy’s plans.
“To think that you can take the federal employees inside of D.C. and send them out into the states to work, well guess what? Only 15 percent of federal employees work inside of D.C. They’re already dispersed throughout the United States,” AFGE President Everett Kelley said in a recent interview. “I just think that they need to educate themselves on what federal employees really do and where they are located.”
The Epoch Times contacted AFGE for comment on Friday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.