Republicans have the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) in their crosshairs, according to a Politico report that states the GOP has united against the independent legislative branch agency that monitors for wrongdoing within the federal government.
The GAO has repeatedly faulted the Trump administration as having illegally withheld money appropriated by Congress, opening almost 40 separate inquiries into whether President Donald Trump’s funding freezes have violated the law. Last week, the agency issued an opinion finding that the administration illegally withheld money appropriated for electric-vehicle infrastructure.
White House Office of Management and Budget director Russ Vought criticized the agency’s findings in a social media post saying, “They are going to call everything an impoundment because they want to grind our work to manage taxpayer dollars effectively to a halt. These are non-events with no consequence. Rearview mirror stuff.”
This week, Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., dismissed the agency’s authority in an opinion piece ahead of a vote on waivers to allow California to set its own pollution standards, a move that the GAO had concluded the Senate could not make with just a majority vote.
“The bureaucrats at the GAO can’t dictate the actions of the U.S. Senate or the will of the voters,” Barrasso wrote in The Wall Street Journal. “My colleagues can safely disregard the office’s decision in this case.”
Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., criticized Republicans for casting doubts on the GAO’s authority and accusing the agency of bias, noting on the floor of the Senate that “there are senators serving in this chamber, Republicans and Democrats, who have made use of the exact same process by going to the GAO. There have been more than 20 different opinions delivered by the GAO at the request of Republican senators and members of Congress in the last three decades.”
A spokesperson for the agency said in a statement that the GAO’s mission is to provide “nonpartisan, fact-based information to Congress to help it carry out its constitutional legislative, appropriations, and oversight functions and protect the power of the purse. Our legal decisions do not take a position on the policy goals of a program, they only examine the procedural issues and compliance with the law.”
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