The Biden Administration is readying to choose a location for a gigantic new FBI headquarters as the central government continues to expand. 

Virginia and Maryland are competing for the project, with Democrats and Republicans of each state uniting against the other state, as they generally do with pork-barrel spending, to host the multibillion-dollar FBI complex. 

The FBI’s 1960s fortress-on-stilts in downtown Washington, D.C., is a brutalist eyesore that is now crumbling from obsolescence and poor maintenance. The bureau has been pushing for a new headquarters complex for years. Objectively, the FBI does need a new, modern HQ for it to continue to function as it does. 

Which brings us to the point: Does the United States want or need an FBI that functions the way it now does? If not, why build a new FBI headquarters? 

Congress hasn’t debated this question. Neither has the country. Everyone has just assumed that the FBI needs a new central superplex on a huge piece of land that happens to be at least twice the size of the Pentagon, without thinking it through or even asking why. Congress just went along and gave the green light. 

Before the new Congress appropriates or authorizes any further funding, it must answer some questions: 

The answers to these questions will determine the purposes that govern the design, development, and construction of any new FBI headquarters complex. They will determine where in the country such a new headquarters would be built—or if it should even be built at all.