Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' desire to 'drain the swamp' by moving federal agencies out of DC is an idea that dates back years

• Gov. Ron DeSantis told The New York Post he wants to see federal agencies out of Washington DC.
• Republicans have introduced numerous unsuccessful bills to the same effect over the years.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose name has been floated as a potential 2024 GOP presidential candidate, recently proposed moving several federal agencies out of Washington, DC — an idea that has long roots in the GOP dating back to the nation's inception and has seen a renewed push by the party over the last several years.

DeSantis told The New York Post last week that he thinks "too much power has accumulated in DC, and the result is a detached administrative state that rules over us and imposes its will on us."

"While there are a host of things that need to be done to re-constitutionalize government, parceling out federal agencies to other parts of the country could help reduce the negative effects of this accumulation of power," DeSantis added, according to The Post.

Washington, DC became the nation's capital on July 16, 1790, when Congress passed the Residence Act, which established a permanent physical capitol that would become DC, according to the National Archives.

The Residence Act was the result of a compromise at the time between Republicans Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and Federalist Alexander Hamilton, which established the capital so that they could pass the Funding Act the same year, which gave the federal government control of state debts.

Lawmakers have introduced bills to de-centralize the government in the last decade

Debates about where to house the nation's capitol have happened since the inception of the capitol in DC. Republicans at that time resisted the push to concentrate political power in DC, but the compromise in 1790 happened to appease pro-slavery states, which believed politicians in Philadelphia had become too sympathetic to abolitionists, according to the Constitution Center.

And in recent years, Republican lawmakers have repeatedly pushed unsuccessful legislation to move certain branches of the federal government, outside the nation's capital.

The Bureau of Land Management in September 2021 moved its headquarters to Grand Junction, Colorado, under the Trump administration, but the agency moved its main headquarters back to DC.

Republican Sen. Joni Ernst introduced the Strategic Withdrawal of Agencies for Meaningful Placement (SWAMP) Act in May 2022, which would require federal agencies to move their headquarters out of DC.

Sen. Josh Hawley introduced the Helping Infrastructure Restore the Economy (HIRE) Act in 2019, which would have required federal agencies to move their operations to " build needed infrastructure" in "economically distressed regions."

The Swamp Act, introduced in 2017, called for federal agencies to move their headquarters, moving 90% of their employees from Washington DC.

The bill, introduced by former Republican Ohio Sen. Warren Davidson, at the time called for federal agency directors to name a new "home base" by 2018 and begin moving their agencies by 2023.

Davidson told Washingtonian at the time that "I think it would be a good idea to move most of the federal government." Davidson told the outlet that he believed the digital age left little reason for the federal government to be centralized in the capitol.

"I really want people to take this as a serious proposal," he added according to the outlet. "It could fundamentally change the relationship between people across the country and their government."

Davidson sponsored a second Drain the Swamp Act in 2021, which would require all federal agencies to move out of the DC metropolitan area by September 2026, only allowing 10% of each agency's employees to stay in the district.

Davidson said his hope for the bill was that "government agencies will reorient themselves to what is most important: the people they serve," in a statement when re-introducing the bill.

WOULD IT WORK?

Republican lawmakers have argued that the federal government has become too detached from the constituents it serves in many parts of the country, namely middle America.

Republican North Carolina Sen. Ted Budd, who co-authored the 2017 version of the Drain the Swamp Bill with Davidson, said that "Americans made it clear that they are fed up with the disconnect between the DC elite and the hardworking American people, and I agree," in a joint statement

"The legislation that Warren and I introduced will help address this detachment by moving these government agencies into the same neighborhoods as the people they are serving across the country," Budd added.

Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat who serves as Washington, DC's delegate to the House of Representatives, said in a November 2021 statement that Davidson's version of the bill at the time worked against its own stated premise of saving money because "the bill doesn't prohibit the federal government from entering into a contract to build a federal building outside of D.C. during the two-year period.

"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," Norton said at the time.

Alan Berube, the interim vice president of DC-based think tank Brookings Metro, argued in a 2019 report that moving most government agencies out of Washington could be done effectively because most federal workers do not live in DC due to high housing costs. For instance, the Department of Social Security has 12,000 employees that live in the DC metro area, and 49,000 employees that live elsewhere, while the FDA has 14,000 workers in the metro area, and 4,400 elsewhere, according to Brookings.

In addition, moving federal agencies out of DC and into Midwestern states could help their workers find cheaper housing and higher standards of living, and would also help the communities by increasing their population and tax base, Vox reported.

"A sensible approach would be for the federal government to take the lead in rebalancing America's allocation of population and resources by taking a good hard look at whether so much federal activity needs to be concentrated in Washington, DC, and its suburbs," Vox senior correspondent, Matt Yglesias, wrote.