Dems support expansion of GAO, but question affordability

Congressional Democrats who consider aggressive oversight critical to greater government accountability are eager to expand the Government Accountability Office's size and mission, but there might not be enough money to give the watchdog agency a big boost in its next appropriation.

The GAO "makes sure the government spends its money wisely and well," Senate Appropriations Legislative Branch Subcommittee Chairwoman Mary Landrieu, D-La., said recently, proclaiming it "pennywise and foolish to under fund that office."

Congress' investigative and auditing agency is seeking $523 million for fiscal 2008, an 8 percent hike over current spending. Testifying before Landrieu's panel last month, GAO Comptroller General David M. Walker said such an increase would help the agency expand its staff from 3,200 to 3,750 over the next six years.

Offering firm support for that request, Landrieu said that she "will do everything possible to fund that office."

For House Democrats, their political fortunes will be enhanced by the ability of the GAO to uncover waste, fraud and abuse in executive branch agencies and programs. The agency, funded at $484 million in fiscal 2006, more than supplements the ability of standing committees to conduct oversight.

GAO's research efforts fuel the kinds of high profile investigations launched by House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., earlier this year, including probes into drug pricing, Iraq reconstruction and the Coast Guard's $24 billion Deepwater modernization program.

Waxman said increasing the size of the agency "is certainly worthwhile; they may very well need more money." Likewise, House Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., whose panel has its own chief investigator on the payroll, said, "I would support [Walker] with vast enthusiasm."

But despite the support on both sides of the Capitol, House Appropriations Legislative Branch Subcommittee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., said the request is too tall an order in the current fiscal environment.

"It's an astronomically high number for this year," she said of the GAO's budget request.

Like her House colleagues, Wasserman Schultz agreed the GAO provides "a valuable service" for lawmakers, and said she had plans to meet with Walker and review the agency's needs.

Although predicting the request for more money would not be met this year, Wasserman Schultz said, "Right now, we're only dealing with the got to dos, must haves, and can't live withouts."

Walker is scheduled to discuss the GAO's budget request before her subcommittee April 19. He will likely make the case that money spent on GAO is an investment that now reaps nearly twice the return in tax dollars saved or recovered than it did eight years ago.

At a recent Senate hearing, Walker asserted that GAO's oversight now saves the government $105 for every dollar spent on the agency.

An increase in the agency's size and budget would therefore "clearly be a strategic asset for this Congress," Walker said.

The Democratic takeover of Congress has clearly changed the climate for government watchdogs, if not Walker's outlook for GAO. The last time Congress changed hands, after Republicans swept the House and Senate in the 1994 elections, GAO's budget saw a sharp decline.

Its fiscal 1995 budget -- the last one decided by a Democratic majority -- was $563 million. But Republicans approved an fiscal 1996 appropriation that slashed spending by more than 16 percent to $472 million, and a year later cut it even further to $411 million.

GAO's largest budget in the years under Republican control came in fiscal 2003, when the agency received $495 million.

The cuts were the result of a Republican effort to scale down the size of the government, fueled partly by suspicions that GAO and other support agencies were too willing to push the Democrats' agenda. The new GOP majority trimmed Congress' operating budget by $206 million, and at the same time the GAO's budget was cut, House Republicans successfully eliminated the Office of Technology Assessment and decreased the size of Congressional Budget Office and the Congressional Research Service.

"In a time when Congress is having to rethink its role and rethink the amount of money that it spends, we have to reduce everything that is not absolutely essential," then-Rep. Robert Walker, R-Pa., said in 1995 as Congress began to cut the size of the support agencies.

Now with congressional committees under the control of oversight hawks like Waxman and Dingell, and with a Democratic leadership team that has made oversight a priority, a GAO spokesman said there is an added need to expand the agency's workforce.

"There's a general sense that since the midterm election, Congress has wanted to do more oversight," he said.

The number of requests for hearing testimony is up this year -- especially for healthcare and homeland security issues -- and the influx indicates that committees will soon be following up with many more GAO report requests later this year, the spokesman said.

And while the GAO should be able to meet the requests, Walker argues the agency needs to move beyond issuing reports and provide greater transparency in government financial and budget reporting.

He has urged Congress to strengthen oversight of the more than $300 billion in annual federal grants awarded to private groups and other entities not part of the federal government as well as review and upgrade, if necessary, the role of federal audit agencies and inspectors general.

The GAO "has to move beyond fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement, and reform how the government operates," Walker testified recently. Such an effort, he added, would require a larger staff and budget.

"We decided not to ask for additional staff until we made the most of our existing staff," Walker said in a brief interview after a recent hearing. "We've done that, [and] now we're being squeezed."