In yet another incident exposing the shocking levels of fraud, waste, and abuse involved in federal spending of the sort that the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency is trying to crack down on, Director of Federal Housing Bill Pulte exposed a cafeteria the federal government is paying to staff and run, though the people would theoretically eat at the cafeteria aren’t there.
Such is what Director Pulte announced when speaking with Fox News Channel host Laura Ingraham on her show “The Ingraham Angle” on Monday, March 17, saying that he is working to identify, as DOGE is doing, wasteful federal ownership or renting of unneeded office buildings and attendant facilities.
Amongst the most egregious of those discoveries so far was his discovery that the federal government is paying for the staffing and running of an entire cafeteria that serves no one, as the employees that would be working and eating in the building which the cafeteria is meant to serve are not there, meaning that every day, five days a week, the cafeteria is pointlessly spending taxpayer dollars.
In the video that Ingraham showed on FNC, Director Pulte exposed the problem by walking into the cafeteria and showing the cameras that despite it being huge, entirely clean, and functioning, with staff preparing food and keeping it ready, the place was entirely empty, devoid of workers who would be eating there.
In that clip, he said, while showing the cameras the deserted facility, “It’s Monday, knock, knock. Nobody’s home. Look at this. Got this big, beautiful area where employees are supposed to work. Nobody’s here.” The video then cut to the director walking through the office building the cafeteria was meant to serve and noting that it was deserted as well. He said, “So we’re in the second headquarter at Freddie Mac. We were just in the other building. There was nobody there for miles and miles and miles. Look at these desks. They’re clean.”
The video then cuts to Director Pulte on Fox News with Ingraham. During that interview, he noted the immense scope of the problem, describing how the building was built for nearly three thousand employees, but only a few dozen show up. He said, “One of the things that we discovered pretty quickly was there was about 2900 people that were supposed to work in the building. Turns out only 49 were showing up full time.”
Ingraham, shocked, even knowing what she does about the federal government and its monumental amounts of waste, asked him to slow down and restate how many people showed up, which was just a few dozen. Doing so, she asked Pulte, “No, no. Slow down. Slow down. 2900 people. How many showed up?”
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Responding, he noted that only a few dozen people showed up for work in the $60 million a year building, telling her, “On average, the highest that we saw on a five-day workweek was 49 people. We’re spending on that one building, just to put the point, this out $57 million a year…in lease payments.”
Watch him here:
Commenting on the matter on X, the “DOGE News” account said, “Director of Federal Housing Bill Pulte: ‘Monday, knock knock, nobody’s home. LOOK AT THIS!’ Cafeteria workers are there 5 days a week, but the people who are supposed to work in the building are not there.” A commenter, pointing out the huge amount of waste, said, “So…we’re paying cafeteria workers to prepare food that’s discarded because no one is there to consume it, janitors to clean up no one’s mess, and maintenance men to replace lightbulbs in offices no one uses. Got it.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video