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The French have beaten the US to good idea involving government.

Fancy setting up house in a French government ministry? Or retiring to a royal hunting lodge? Line up now for a supersize sale of 1,700 properties by the French state, seeking to shed dilapidated, expensive-to-maintain buildings and chip away at the country’s record-high debt.

Foreigners are welcome to join the bidding, Budget Minister Francois Baroin said in announcing the sell-off Wednesday — but their cash must be clean. Any buyer, whether a movie star, foreign government or ordinary taxpayer, will undergo thorough background checks.

By releasing a long-term list of state properties for sale publicly for the first time, the government appears determined to avoid the kind of controversies and secrecy that dogged some past sales of French property, both public and private, to shady magnates or deposed despots.

The properties in question include chateaux, such as one in Thonon-les-Bains built in 1800 and perched on the shore of Lake Geneva at the foot of the Alps. Another is a royal hunting lodge and guest house built the century before in the Saint-Germain-en-Laye forest west of Paris. “Buildings unoccupied for many years. Needs restoration,” reads the government’s listing for that property.

France, with its historically strong, centralized state, has too much property, Baroin said, disproportionate compared with other countries. The state must get rid of “useless and unadapted buildings.” The plan announced Wednesday lays out planned sales from now through the end of 2013.

The best ways for the US government to retire our national debt are through tax cuts and the releasing of their vast property holdings, to citizens only, for cash.

The French have figured this out. When will our “leaders”?