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06.06.2002, 15:38

The World's Largest Landlord / Grundbesitz USA, Artikel

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The World's Largest Landlord

 

by J. Christopher Robbins

[Posted June 6, 2002]

[img][/img] When
state budget cuts evicted Jesse Ventura from the 20-room Minnesota
governor’s mansion earlier this month, I was half expecting the
scene to turn nasty.

"Budget cuts?" asks the buff, bald, muscle-laden
wrestler.

"Yes, Governor'" a pencil-necked bureaucrat
replies, flashing a spreadsheet splashed with red ink."You must move out
or select another executive branch facility to be slashed."

The former Navy SEAL growls."Go tell the budget
committee that the legislature will need more than a spreadsheet to get me out
of this house."

But alas, there was no showdown at sundown. Why fight, asks
Ventura, when he prefers his own family home outside town to the luxuriant
Tudor governor’s residence. So he and his wife took one for the team and
packed up.The temporarily shrinking stock of executive-branch office in
Minnesota is an exception, however. 

Elsewhere, the physical size of government has been
expanding for much of this decade. It is a trend that continues,
despite diminishing tax returns, a struggling economy, and mounting deficits.

Let’s look at the narrow question of government office
space. Since 1997, the federal government has expanded by 280 million
square feet, according to the General Services Administration. By comparison,
the Minnesota governor’s mansion is about 25,000 square feet. The average
American family homestead is 2,100 square feet. The massive Empire State
building fills 2.1 million feet.

Thus, in only five years, the federal government’s
physical size has grown by 11,200 Minnesota governors' mansions, 134,000
single family homes, or 90 Empire State Buildings.

In defense, the GSA, which oversees most of our
government’s 3.3 billion square feet, says this property is dispersed in all
50 states. The agency also points out that the real growth rate has been a
modest 2 percent per year since 1997, and that only 25 percent is actually
commercial space. The rest is used for warehousing and the military.

To be fair, this did not happen overnight. The GSA didn’t
necessarily want to become the world’s largest landlord. Congress made it
that way by passing laws over the years that hired over 1 million federal
employees. Employees need space. The Democrats are not entirely at fault. And
the Republicans are not totally guilty either. Scoundrels in both parties
share the blame. 

It wasn’t always this way. Our federal government has
frugal origins. Take the most obvious examples, The Constitution and the
Declaration of Independence. Both were crafted in colonial-era Philadelphia,
once a dirty, hot, and crowded place to spend a summer. There were no
Roman-revival marble palaces, no underground private subways, and no
air-conditioning. On their visits to town, delegates complained bitterly.

Yet despite being relegated to class D office space in
Independence Hall, the founders managed just fine. In fact, they did far
better than any Congress since, neither spending public money nor passing
tax-code-sized laws that require teams of lawyers to comprehend. Their work in
Philadelphia can be read and understood by school children. It all compels the
conclusion that politicians do their best work when they are hot, musty, and
cramped. Perhaps we should make them hold session on Amtrak.

Indeed, Amtrak’s creaky coaches would be comfortable
compared with the modest surroundings that various other government agencies
once occupied. The Supreme Court dwelled in borrowed space until 1935.
Justices wrote decisions at home. For a period, the court met in the basement
of the Capitol. Likewise, before World War I, many other divisions of
government fit snugly inside Washington, D.C., brownstones.

There is no excuse for why the U.S. Department of the
Treasury must inhabit the equivalent of 20 Empire State Buildings or why more
Americans work as bureaucrats for the Department of Agriculture than as
farmers East of the Mississippi. 

As for Jesse Ventura, the Minnesota governor's staffers
say he plans to rent hotel facilities for social events, the same way
governors did before the mansion was constructed in the 1960s. And to cut back
on expenses even further, they won’t invite the legislature.

<hr align="left" width="33%" SIZE="1">

J. Christopher Robbins, J.D., is a writer from Miami. Send
him MAIL and see his
Mises.org Articles
Archive.

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End Notes

GSA sphere of influence is the Federal inventory of 3.3
billion square feet of space (including 674 million square feet of office
space).See
the report.

The White House, in this year’s budget, cites
a different number. It says the government owns and/or controls 3.2
billion square feet.

The 1997 figure is 3.02 billion. However, the Washington
Post reported an even lower number for 1997, saying it was 2.9 billion.

The Federal Government’s Real
Estate portfolio value is $304 billion.

Information on the Supreme
Court of the United States meeting in Old City Hall.

National
Association of Home Builders, average square footage is 2,200 (cited in )
2,060 square feet in 1993, according to another authority.

Space by Government
Agency.  120,000 Americans work for the U.S.D.A.. See,
"Agricultural Subsidies, Consumers Take Charge," Tolman, Jonathan.


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