EXCLUSIVE — House Republicans are blasting the Small Business Administration for what they claim are “extreme” work-from-home policies in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, requesting that the agency provide information about the status and pay for teleworkers.

In a letter obtained exclusively by the Washington Examiner, House Small Business Committee Chairman Roger Williams (R-TX) and committee member Rep. Mark Alford (R-MO) accuse the SBA of failing to implement a return to in-person work strategy and taking advantage of a privilege that small business owners do not have.

“The COVID-19 pandemic is over and done with, and it’s past time the SBA return to work fully,” Williams said in a statement. “The SBA is tasked with one purpose — to help Main Street. It’s difficult to do that effectively when you’re working from home and are more focused on making sure your laundry is washed and folded rather than ensuring the needs of our entrepreneurs are met.”

“Our small business owners don’t have the luxury to work from home, and the SBA should be marching to the same tune,” the chairman added.

In April 2023, White House chief of staff Jeff Zients sent out a memo asking all agencies to end work-from-home policies because in-person work “is critical to the well-being of our teams and will enable us to deliver better results for the American people.” However, the Government Accountability Office released a report that the SBA was only using 10% of its office space, arguing that its current policy is to allow employees in five days every two weeks.

“Nearly a year after the Biden Administration ended the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency, the SBA is still not back to work,” the committee members wrote in their letter.

The members also pointed to the SBA’s fiscal 2025 spending requests that include a $42 million allocation for rent, a “30 percent increase over FY23 funding.”

“This Committee is deeply troubled by the rationale behind such a substantial increase in funding over just two years. In your testimony during the Committee hearing, you stated, ‘[w]e have 50 percent occupancy on any given day,’ a dramatically different number than that of GAO,” Williams and Alford wrote, referring to testimony given by Administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman last week. “Even if that is true, leaving a multimillion dollar building empty between 50 and 90 percent of the time is unacceptable and a waste of taxpayer dollars.”

The members claim the occupancy rate that Guzman stated in her testimony is “inconsistent with what we witnessed with our own eyes” when they toured the SBA on Dec. 3, 2023, and “walked past rows and rows of empty desks.”

The committee is demanding the SBA provide their action plan for returning to in-person work that they submitted to Zients; the average amount of days SBA employees spend in telework during a pay period; and what percentage of employees spend entire pay periods in telework, among others, by April 9.

“Despite your answers, we are still concerned with the SBA’s extreme work from home policies and what that entails for America’s 33 million small businesses,” the committee wrote.

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Williams has been active in calling on the Biden administration to act more to protect small businesses. In February, the chairman sent his third letter to President Joe Biden calling on him to nominate a replacement for a long-vacant position that advocates on behalf of small-business owners. The agency has been operating without the chief counsel for advocacy position for the last six years.

The Washington Examiner reached out to the Small Business Administration for comment.