In a statement to the Washington Examiner, Ernst argued that moving employees closer to the businesses they serve would improve their work ethic.

“If mom-and-pop shops had the work ethic of SBA bureaucrats, they would be forced to close immediately,” she said. “Connecting with an agency employee should not be a rare occurrence worthy of celebrating. There is no better way to fix the broken culture at the SBA than to bring them closer to the people they serve so that they perform more like a family business and less like a bloated bureaucracy.”

The bill is aimed at reducing the SBA’s headquarters office space after it said that even if 100% of employees came to work in person in Washington, D.C., only about two-thirds of headquarters capacity would be used. Ernst’s bill would also reduce headquarters office space by 30%.

The bill would require that the moved employees not work remotely full time.

The move would serve to “promote geographical diversity, including consideration of rural markets,” and “ensure adequate staffing throughout the regions of the Administration, to promote in-person customer service,” the bill read.

The moving of employees must be completed within a year of the bill’s implementation, while the reduction of office space must be completed within two years.

Ernst, who has made the cutting of perceived government waste a central part of her work in Congress, took up the cause against telework. At the first Department of Government Efficiency caucus meeting last week, she released a detailed report outlining the extent and effects of telework.

The report outlined the costs associated with federal workers working from home. Three percent of the federal workforce teleworked daily before COVID-19, according to the report. Now, only 6% of workers report in-person full time, with a third entirely remote. Ernst’s report warned that telework led to slacking, with workers reportedly caught in leisurely activities while working.

It said $8 billion is spent yearly maintaining and leasing government office buildings and $7.7 billion on the energy to keep them running. The government owns 7,697 vacant buildings and another 2,265 partially empty buildings.

The report concluded by recommending a “use it or lose it” policy toward federal real estate, moving federal employees closer to their place of work, ending blanket telework and instead going on a case-by-case basis, and tracking employees.

“Things are so upside down in the federal government that it is more common for employees to be overpaid than to work in the office five days a week,” Ernst said. “We need to flip Washington on its head, make bureaucrats show up to work like the rest of us, and evaluate individual performance in the same way every business in America does. I am excited to work with DOGE and the Trump administration to disrupt the bureaucrat class and bring common sense to the capital.”