The Strategic Withdrawal of Agencies for Meaningful Placement Act, or SWAMP Act, seeks to decentralize government operations and directs federal agencies to solicit bids from municipalities to relocate around the country.

“Too often, federal bureaucrats craft policies in a vacuum, disconnected from the realities facing Americans across the country,” Rep. Ashley Hinson, an Iowa Republican who introduced the legislation, said in a statement to Bisnow.

President Donald Trump has set out to dramatically shrink the federal bureaucracy with billionaire Elon Musk’s efforts at the Department of Government Efficiency. The plans the pair have made would not only impact Washington, where the federal government leases some 35M SF, but would reverberate across the country’s office market.

“Our founding fathers never envisioned so much power being centralized within a few mile radius, and I believe President Trump is the perfect person to shake things up and give power back to the people,” Hinson said.

Rep. Jared Golden, a Maine Democrat, has also signed on to the bill in the House. Sen. Joni Ernst, another Iowa Republican, has introduced the bill in the Senate.

The legislation would also prohibit federal agencies from starting any major office renovations or executing new leases in D.C. and the surrounding counties of Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William, Virginia.

The Executive Office of the President, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Departments of State, Defense and Energy, and other agencies in the national security space would be exempt from the relocation requirement.

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