You won’t be reading about it in the mainstream media, because how legislative branch agencies like the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) are funded isn’t a first or even-second order question in the context of a $37 trillion national debt and continuing annual deficits.
But maybe the fact the issues to be discussed in the following analysis aren’t a top priority says something crucially important about why the federal government, thanks to both Democratic and Republican congressional majorities and Oval Office occupants since LBJ, is so far in debt.
Here’s the political and economic context in which that possibility becomes clear: The House version of the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act of 2026 chops the GAO’s budget by 48 percent, or $396.5 billion. The Senate version keeps the GAO at its present funding level of $811 billion.
And the House version awards CBO with a $20 million budget increase, while the Senate version only hikes the CBO checkbook by $2 million. Understand that the GAO is the investigative arm of Congress, while the CBO is the congressional economic forecaster.
Now, all of those budget numbers simply make normal people’s eyes glaze over, but the three questions mentioned in the headline above should grab the attention of every American who wants the constitutional republic the Founders gave us — that is, the one in which they made Congress the first branch for many good and solid reasons that still obtain — to survive for many more centuries:
Question Number One: Every year, the GAO publishes reports detailing hundreds of billions of dollars that could be saved if executive branch agencies would implement the congressional investigative arm’s recommendations.
For example, the July 2024 report on the GAO’s 5,480 open recommendations claims savings of as much as $208 billion. But whether the GAO recommendations are actually implemented is entirely up to executive branch agencies.
Congress created the GAO in 1921. With about 1,200 new GAO recommendations now being published each year, the fact that 5,480 recommendation are being ignored raises this obvious question: When is Congress going to make it mandatory for agencies to implement GAO recommendations and impose annual and substantial budgetary penalties for failure to comply?
2. Question Number Two: Thanks to those thousands of recommendations the GAO makes, there are billions of dollars saved when agencies do what is suggested. This Nov. 2024 report from the GAO puts the savings for just the previous year at $67.5 billion.
Granted, $67.5 billion in a $6 trillion annual federal budget ain’t much, but whatever the amount might be, shouldn’t that amount be reflected somehow in the following year’s budget requests from the agencies?
Readers who are familiar with the federal bureaucracy’s end-of-year “use-it-or-lose-it” mentality know exactly why that never happens. Bureaucratic and political empire building requires bigger budgets every year; so actually going to Congress and requesting $67.5 billion less than your agency got last year is a guaranteed one-way ticket to the turkey farm.
And that brings us to Question Number Two: When is Congress going to require executive branch agencies either to reduce their following annual budget requests by an amount that reflects the GAO’s calculation of potential savings, or provide Congress with a credible explanation for why the GAO was wrong, or alternatively, how the agency put the savings to good use elsewhere in its budget?
We come now to Question Number Three: Every representative and senator who ever took the oath of office or delivered a campaign stump speech back home has claimed at least a thousand times to be “concerned” or “worried” or “troubled” by the federal government’s endless irresponsible spending.
And, at least since 1921, the GAO has been pointing out to those same representatives and senators elected in the years since just how that irresponsible spending can be stopped. So why on earth are House Republicans doing something in 2026 to their own investigative arm that they have never done to any executive branch agency?
Yes, I know all about the GAO going to federal court to oppose some of President Donald Trump’s plans to impound previously appropriated funds. Trump complained to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.), and a decision was made to “send a message” to the GAO.
But the House version of the appropriations measure also included specific instructions to the GAO to back off that impoundment litigation, so why is it also necessary to cut the GAO’s budget by half?
As one grizzled senior aide told this author, “that’s like cutting off your nose to spite your face.” Even if the House folks think the Senate will “save” them, as appears likely to happen, one suspects that GAO rank-and-filers will never forget which party it was that pushed the 48 percent budget cut.
But wait, there is more. The House wants to give the CBO a $20 million boost, while the Senate just lopped off the zero of that figure, but still increases the CBO budget for 2026. This is the same CBO that, since its birth in 1974, has never met a Republican tax cut proposal that it couldn’t misrepresent by claiming it would increase the deficit.
So Question Number Three is this: Why are Capitol Hill Republicans rewarding the very congressional forecasting agency that year after year after year refuses to recognize the reality that federal revenues go up, not down, thanks to the expanded economic growth sparked by tax cuts?
Maybe House Republicans should be sending a message to the CBO instead of the GAO.
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