Moving the Federal Government out of Washington DC

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is a federal agency that oversees drilling, mining, and other administering about one-eight of the landmass in the United States. In August 2020, the Donald Trump administration moved the headquarters of the BLM from its Washington DC headquarters to Grand Junction, Colorado. This didn't last, by September 2021, the Biden administration announced that the BLM would return back to having its headquarters in Washington DC.

Virginia, specifically Northern Virginia, gains a huge economic boast because of its proximity to Washington DC. But those federal jobs are not guaranteed, especially if a Trump administration would occur.

In fact, moving federal jobs away from the Washington DC area is a campaign promise from Trump. From the campaign’s website and giving the BLM move to Colorado as an example, “Up to 100,000 government positions could be moved out of Washington.”

On Tuesday, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin addressed a joint meeting of Virginia Legislators about the economic future of Virginia. There's much to celebrate with a budget surplus and Virginia named the top state for business.

After the meeting, Youngkin took questions from the press and spoke about Northern Virginia having concerns with the federal government not demanding a return to the office.

When asked about the potential of a proposal to have 100,000 of those federal jobs leave the Washington DC area, Youngkin responded with saying that it was a complete mischaracterization. “I hope you correct if you write something on this.”

“We could sit around and speculate on what they are going to propose and what they are not going to propose. The reality is that it is all speculative.”

Moving the BLM was not speculative because for a year, their offices had moved to the other side of the country and the staff could not simply commute from Virginia.

According to a report from the Congressional Research Service, over 400,000 federal jobs are in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia region with about 140,000 in Virginia.

Youngkin said that “Should there be any movement in workforce, there aren't enough jobs in Virginia to absorb that supply of talented workers is a complete mischaracterization. In fact there's 300,000 jobs unfilled.” Youngkin reiterated that, “my biggest challenge is keeping people in Virginia as opposed to moving away because of lower taxes in other states and lower cost of living.”

In a follow-up about what the Governor Youngkin referred to as mischaracterizations, Youngkin Press Secretary Christian Martinez said,

“Virginians are more concerned about how Kamala Harris's agenda would impact our workforce and economy. Kamala Harris said she 'unequivocally agreed' with the goal of reducing the defense budget, praising a proposal by Bernie Sanders to cut 10 percent of America's defense budget - $74 billion in total. Virginia is the top recipient in the country for defense spending. The defense industry generates $103 billion in total economic impact that supports over 885,000 jobs across the state.”

The concept of moving jobs out of the Virginia was first introduced to me by Sebastian Gorka. Gorka has long been a guy on my radar as a conservative national radio host and former Trump Deputy Assistant. His wife is a former Department of Homeland Security official and currently is the chair of the Fairfax County GOP. He blocked me on Twitter a few years ago but that didn't stop me from seeing a tweet of his that further explains this policy of “draining the swamp.”

This tweet from August 2021 lays out this plan in easy understandable terms.

“So DJT [Donald Trump] runs in 2024

He wins a 2nd term as President.

Then what?

- Dissolve EPA [Environmental Protection Agency]

- Dissolve Dept. Ed.

- Dissolve [of] Interior

- Move State [Department] to Wyoming

- DHS [Department of Homeland Security] to Florida

- DoJ [Department of Justice] to Montana

- The CIA [Central Intelligence Agency]to the Dakotas

- DoD [Department of Defense] to TX. (Not Austin)