Republican members of the House’s DOGE subcommittee are defending their plans to drastically reduce the government’s owned and leased office space. Democrats are calling the effort an ill-conceived fire sale.

In a Tuesday hearing, the GOP members of the House’s Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency said they are intent on reducing the federal real estate portfolio of approximately 277,000 buildings.

Chairwoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said taxpayers spend about $10 billion a year to maintain office space despite the fact that no one knows exactly how much of it is actually being used.

“American taxpayers have been drowning in debt, inflation, unaffordable grocery prices, high interest rates, and have been suffering to get by,” Ms. Greene said. “All while the federal government is pouring billions of dollars into wasteful empty office buildings and luxurious, high-end furniture, which they — the American taxpayers — can’t even afford for themselves.”

Government statistics show there currently is about $370 billion in backlogged deferred maintenance and repairs needed on government buildings.

President Trump issued an executive order in February directing agency heads to coordinate with DOGE to identify lease termination rights and require the General Services Administration, which manages the federal real estate portfolio, to submit a plan for dumping government-owned facilities that are no longer needed.

The GSA currently lists more than a dozen federal buildings across the country as “assets identified for accelerated disposition.” DOGE’s self-styled “Wall of Receipts” — a running tally of what the department says is its efforts to reduce government waste — cites 676 lease terminations totaling approximately $400 million in cost savings.

The acting director of physical infrastructure at the Government Accountability Office, David Marroni, cautioned the committee about moving too quickly to sell government office buildings, however. He said Mr. Trump’s return-to-office mandate and federal workforce cuts are just starting to take effect and it will take months to determine the amount of office space agencies will need.

A recent Harvard study found that elevated interest rates and falling property values are squeezing the commercial real estate market. Ranking member Melanie Stansbury said, “Anyone who works in real estate right now knows that this is not a good time to sell real estate.”

”It is a challenging time, particularly commercial,” Mr. Marroni responded.

Democrats on the committee claim that Elon Musk’s DOGE wants to sell properties and lease the office space back to federal agencies, costing taxpayers more in the long run.

Congresswoman Shontel Brown told the committee a DOGE plan to sell a government building in her district at Cleveland, Ohio was reckless. “What they are doing is looting the federal government and stripping it for parts,” Ms. Brown said.

The head of a group that represents landlords who rent to the federal government says some of the rapid cuts have not been logical. “There is a lot of haste going on today and is ill thought through,” a former chairman of the National Federal Development Association, Ron Kendall, says.

The head of the government watchdog organization Open the Books testified that along with billions in lease payments for unused space, the government is spending billions more on furniture for those spaces.

“Today’s expansive, excessive — and sometimes opulent — federal real estate portfolio is both a monument to the administrative state and a mausoleum of lost dreams, opportunity and freedom for American taxpayers,” Open the Books chief executive John Hart said.

Mr. Hart told the committee that the government spends $1 billion a year on furniture purchases, much of it for empty government buildings.