WASHINGTON — Education Secretary Linda McMahon plans to spend $43,000 on new furniture for her government office, a workspace makeover that comes as McMahon, a former pro-wrestling executive, lobbies Congress to shut down her department.

McMahon’s team has informed Congress that her current furniture is worn out and “cannot be configurationally or aesthetically integrated into the agency’s new office space,” according to Education Department records reviewed by The New York Times that have not been publicly disclosed.

A senior official at the Education Department said the costs include a new desk, conference table, chairs and other items. McMahon’s communications department did not specifically respond to a request for a detailed breakdown of the $43,278.64 in expenses.

The education secretary announced in March that she was moving the department out of the seven-story, concrete-and-glass building in southwest Washington where federal education employees have worked since construction was completed in 1961.

The department’s new headquarters will occupy a smaller space, one block south, in a privately owned building that was once home to the now-shuttered U.S. Agency for International Development, which the Trump administration closed last year.

McMahon has said the move would save about $5 million in annual operating costs following “unprecedented progress in reducing the federal education footprint,” a reference to her work toward President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to close the Education Department.

Federal law requires the executive branch to operate the department. The Republican-controlled Congress has not approved legislation to close it, and the Senate’s education committee has advanced legislation to block the administration from transferring major Education Department offices to other agencies.

Still, McMahon has supervised a systematic dismantling of her department during her nearly 20 months as education secretary, firing hundreds of workers and dispatching the department’s most significant functions to the Labor Department, Justice Department and other parts of the executive branch. Her decision to move special education services to the Health and Human Services Department has drawn sharp rebukes from advocates for disabled students.

The Education Department employs about 2,300 workers, according to federal workforce data, down from about 4,100 at the start of Trump’s second term. In March, McMahon said 70% of the department’s existing headquarters was vacant.

In its new location, the department will occupy 80% less space than it did in its previous building, which has about 386,600 square feet of usable space, according to the General Services Administration, which manages federal property.

In response to questions about McMahon’s office purchases, Savannah Newhouse, the Education Department’s press secretary, said the agency was “saving taxpayers millions of dollars.”

“Believe it or not, just like in the private sector, new federal offices need places to sit, write and meet,” Newhouse said of the new furniture.

During Trump’s first term, several Cabinet officials faced ethics and spending questions involving office furniture and costly renovations.

In 2017, Ben Carson, the housing secretary, planned to spend $31,500 on a custom mahogany dining room set for his office as his agency cut programs to support the homeless, elderly and poor. Carson ultimately canceled the purchase.

In 2018, Scott Pruitt resigned from the top job at the Environmental Protection Agency after facing heavy criticism over spending, including $43,000 on a secure, soundproof phone booth in his office.

The Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog agency, said the purchase broke the law because the EPA hadn’t notified Congress of cumulative office expenditures exceeding $5,000. Congress has long included the cap on office redecorating to limit spending on executive office upgrades.

McMahon’s department notified Congress of her redecorating plans in September, according to the records the Times reviewed.

On her first day as education secretary, McMahon informed staff that their “final mission” was to help shutter the agency. But during Trump’s first term, the administration spent millions on renovating the education building to consolidate workers under one roof.

That remodeling cost nearly $50 million, which the administration justified at the time with a similar goal of saving money in the long run.

The first $36.7 million was budgeted to consolidate work spaces into a more modern open-concept floor plan and upgrade to the electrical and HVAC systems in 2019, according to GSA records. The government funded another $12.5 million in 2020 to expand the open-concept plans to additional floors in the building.

The federal government now needs to spend about $13 million renovating the department’s new space, according to two people familiar with the planning.

After McMahon moves into her new office, plans call for the Energy Department to take over the “Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building,” as it was officially named under legislation unanimously approved by Congress and signed by President George W. Bush in 2007.

But first, the Energy Department will need to make its own renovations to the education building, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2017.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has estimated that remodeling will cost $215 million.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Michael C. Bender/Erin Schaff
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