Statecraft

Hawley to Introduce Bill to Move Federal Agencies out of Washington D.C. to Economically Stagnant Areas

Days after squaring off online against “elitist” critics of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue’s relocation of agency jobs, Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) will introduce legislation on Wednesday that would move the majority of the federal bureaucracy out of Washington D.C. to economically depressed areas, according to a summary of the bill provided to National Review.

The “Helping Infrastructure Restore the Economy (HIRE) Act,” which is cosponsored by Senator Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.), would move 90 percent of the positions within ten executive agencies to economically distressed regions that have a stake in the work of those respective agencies.

Under the bill, the Department of Agriculture would be relocated to Hawley’s home state of Missouri while the Department of Education would move to Blackburn’s Tennessee, in order to disperse the economic benefits associated with relatively high-paying government jobs that currently accrue to just a few zip codes.

“Every year Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars fund federal agencies that are mainly located in the D.C. bubble. That’s a big part of the problem with Washington: they’re too removed from the rest of America. The Hire Act will move policymakers directly into the communities they serve, creating thousands of jobs for local communities and saving taxpayers billions of dollars along the way,” Hawley said in a statement.