Drain the Swamp Act would require all federal agencies relocate outside DC by 2026, keeping maximum 10% of employees there
As the modern-day Minnesota Twins and Texas Rangers both said decades ago, “Let’s move out of D.C.”
Context
Since 1947, a federal law has required all agencies and departments be located in or around the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. The most prominent exception is the Centers for Disease Control’s headquarters in Atlanta, but the agency was originally created the year prior (1946) to combat a southern-based malaria outbreak.
Critics say that this D.C.-centered bureaucracy results in an increasingly overbearing federal government with left-leaning public policies. The District of Columbia consistently produces a Democratic landslide wider than any state, with 92.2 percent of its 2020 presidential vote for Joe Biden. Similarly, the northeast Virginia suburbs of D.C. (where many federal workers actually live) vote substantially more Democratic than the rest of Virginia.
These critics, led by former President Donald Trump, popularly nicknamed this phenomenon “the swamp” and called efforts and proposals to diminish this effect “draining the swamp.”
In 2019, GovTrack Insider previously covered one of these efforts: the SWAMP (Strategic Withdrawal of Agencies for Meaningful Placement Act) Act, which would have repealed that 1947 law requiring federal agencies be located in and around D.C. It didn’t pass, but even if it had, it simply would have allowed those agencies to move.
Now, another bill goes a step further.
What the bill does
The Drain the Swamp Act would actually require all federal agencies to relocate outside the D.C. metropolitan area, maintain a maximum of 10 percent of their employees in the area. The deadline would be September 30, 2026.
It was introduced in the House on October 25 as H.R. 5712, by Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH8).
What supporters say
Supporters argue that the federal government has become too disconnected from the constituents it’s intended to represent and reflect, whether in income or geography.
“Five out of ten of the richest counties in the country are located in Washington. Something is wrong here,” Rep. Davidson said in a 2017 press release upon introducing a prior version of the bill. “In addition to cost benefits, my hope is that government agencies will reorient themselves to what is most important: the people they serve.”
(According to the most recent Census Bureau estimates, four of the 10 richest counties by median household income are in the greater D.C. area: Loudoun County, Virginia at #1; Fairfax County, Virginia at #2; Howard County, Maryland at #6; and Arlington County, Virginia at #7.)
What opponents say
Opponents counter that despite the GOP often pledging fidelity to the vision of America’s founders, while their push to limit the actual size and reach of D.C.-based government agencies may be in keeping with that, their push to move them out of D.C. is very much against it.
“Once again, Republicans from far-away districts have introduced bills to move federal agencies out of the District and to cease providing space for others,” D.C.’s nonvoting Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton said in a press release. “Like it or not, my Republican friends, D.C. is the nation’s capital and the seat of the federal government, meant by the Framers to house the headquarters of its agencies. As always, I pledge to defeat these bills.”
Odds of passage
The bill has not yet attracted any cosponsors. It awaits a potential vote in the House Oversight and Reform Committee.
Odds of passage are low in the Democratic-controlled chamber.
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This article was written by GovTrack Insider staff writer Jesse Rifkin.
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