What Does the U.S. Government Accountability Office Do? (with Gene Dodaro)

Understanding Congress

The topic of this episode is, “What does the U.S. Government Accountability Office do?”

To answer that question we have Gene Dodaro. He is the eighth Comptroller General of the United States—that means he is the head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). He has held that position since December 2010. Prior to becoming the top dog at this government watchdog agency, Gene held other executive positions at GAO, including Chief Operating Officer. Remarkably, Gene has spent a half of a century at the agency. So, with all that experience I can think of nobody better to ask the question, “What does the Government Accountability Office do?”

Kevin Kosar:

Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution and few Americans think well of it, but Congress is essential to our republic. It's a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be, and that is why we are here to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation. I'm your host, Kevin Kosar, and I'm a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington DC.

Gene, welcome to the program.

Gene Dodaro:

It's a pleasure to be with you, Kevin.

Kevin Kosar:

Let's start at the very beginning. GAO was created a century ago. Why

Gene Dodaro:

GAO was created in 1921—right after World War I. The government had created a large debt during that time in order to promulgate the war, and there was concern about having a better, more disciplined way to handle the federal government's budget process. In the same legislation in which we were created, the Bureau of the Budget—which is now known as the Office of Management Budget (OMB) in the executive office of the President—was also created, and the very first requirement was put in place for the President to submit a budget annually to the Congress. Then GAO was placed in the legislative branch in order to provide a check and balance on the receipts and expenditures of federal funds and the proper application of those funds to meet the intent of the appropriation legislation for the Congress. So it was an arrangement put in place to provide more fiscal discipline to the federal government's budget process and execution.

Kevin Kosar:

At that time, GAO had a different name, which to some degree reflected its more limited mission at the time. What was it called back then?

Gene Dodaro:

It was the General Accounting Office. That's what it was when I first joined GAO in 1973. But at that time even, we were doing more than accounting, but that was our original name—the General Accounting Office.

Kevin Kosar:

It seems that fundamentally GAO was initially established to deal with a basic kind of principle-agent problem that Congress faces, which is: Congress as the principle passes a law puts money towards achieving the objectives in the law, but then the job of actually spending the money and doing the execution is over in the executive branch.

In terms of visibility and understanding, “Is this money going where it should go? Is it being used improperly?”, how is Congress to figure that out other than by hauling executives over and asking them, in which case you're relying upon information they provide. So GAO has the ability to get into the books of agencies, and to follow the money.

Gene Dodaro:

Absolutely, Kevin. One of the roles of GAO is to make sure that the appropriation laws enacted by the Congress are properly implemented. We audit the federal government's consolidated financial statements every year, and we’ve worked to create an arrangement where the Inspectors General of each major department and agency audit or arrange for independent audits of the books of the financial operations of each federal agency across the federal government. And then we review that work. It's done of course with our methodology, and then we audit some agencies individually, like the IRS for example. We audit all the receipts that they collect for the federal government. We audit the Bureau of Public Debt, we audit the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and then we review all these other audits across government and then issue our report on the government's consolidated financial statements. We also issue legal decisions that anyone has a question in Congress about the proper application of the funds and whether it was done in accordance with appropriation law.

So we're very much in the business of oversight. Congress is very resourced by the executive branch, and that's why they need a strong GAO in order to provide that oversight over them, so the system of checks and balances in our government work properly and that the executive branch properly executes the laws that are put in place for Congress. And we've grown over the years to not just on fiscal issues, but also looking at whether or not government programs and activities and everything the federal government does is accordance with the authorizing legislation of the federal government's activities.

Actually, only about 10% of what we do now is in the original role that we had back in 1921 in the financial management area. The vast majority is looking to see whether programs, policies, regulations, and other activities put in place by Congress are operating as intended, and to make sure the government is operating as efficiently and effectively in accordance with congressional direction as possible, or whether there's need to make refinements and regulations and to help Congress with their fundamental oversight functions as well as their appropriation and responsibilities.

Kevin Kosar:

So the listener who surfs over to gao.gov and starts scanning all the great stuff you have there, might see the term "bid protest" and say, "Huh, what is that about?" What is bid protest and what's GAO's role there?

Gene Dodaro:

We've had that role for decades through the Competition in Contracting Act (1984). Every year, the federal government spends $500 billion or more to procure certain services items, etc. If you're a contractor that bids on a government contract and you don't win and you're concerned that the federal agency or department didn't follow the laws or things weren't properly clear in their procurement process or you think you weren't treated fairly, you can come to GAO and file a bid protest and say you don't think this was followed for the following reasons. GAO will issue an opinion within 100 days as to whether or not we sustain the protest or deny the protest.

Sometimes the agencies—once the protest is made and understanding the concerns that are being had—will take immediate action to rectify the situation. And so we have a team of highly skilled procurement experts in law here at GAO in our Office of General Counsel. They'll hold hearings, they'll take documents from the protestors and agencies, and then eventually they'll render a decision. We probably get about well over 2,000 of these bid protests every year. Competition for federal contracts is key. And in some areas there's been consolidation in the industries, which makes the competition a little bit more intense.

Kevin Kosar:

So I want to talk a little more about something you alluded to already, which is that GAO had this more limited mission 100 years ago, and it's subsequently been expanded. And if memory serves, one of the first expansions occurred around 1974. This was a period when Congress as a whole had just decided to bulk up its power. It was tired of being pushed around by the executive, whether it was President Nixon or President Johnson, and it just started investing in itself. It created a Congressional Budget Office, it created a new Budgeting Act, it expanded the Legislative Reference Service into the Congressional Research Service, invested in more staff, and it gave GAO more to do.

What was that first expansion in the early '70s?

Gene Dodaro:

The first one came in 1970 when our role was expanded to include program evaluation plus all the financial stuff that we have. We rarely had anything taken away, it has been added to our responsibilities. So that was first, and you're exactly right. In 1974, there was legislation passed in the Budget Control and Impoundment Act, and previously certain presidents had tried to not spend money that Congress had appropriated and withhold the funds. There was a lot of concern and debate about whether that was constitutional or not, so there was eventually a law—an agreement—worked out, where presidents could submit what are called rescissions that where they would not spend the money that Congress has appropriated, but Congress would have to be notified. They would be given 45 days and they had to approve that rescission in order for it to take place. If not, then the executive branch was to then spend the money in accordance with congressional direction. There was also a different type of proposal called a deferral, which the President would defer the money, and unless Congress acted against that within certain timeframes, then that could be deferred. But most of its focus is on the rescission part.

Once there's a special message from the President to the Congress in order to rescind, make a proposal for rescission, and occurs in these special messages, GAO has 10 days to inform the Congress of what the impact of that rescission would be on the particular programs or activities entail. And then Congress then acts within 45 days. Now, if Congress doesn't act affirmatively, the money is to be released. So our job is to make sure indeed the money is released and we're authorized to go to court in order to enforce the release of the money if the executive agencies did not do that on their own accord. The only one time have we had to do that was right after the law was passed in the '70s and it was involved in Housing and Urban Development Department. We actually notified Congress we were going to take this action, but before it got to court, HUD released the money, so it didn't really get that far. Since then we haven't really had any issues.

Now we also have responsibility where if we notice and through our work or it comes to our attention through other parties, and this will happen, federal decisions made by Congress and the corporation laws are virtually all public except for certain highly classified areas. So people know that they're to expect some money or the agency's supposed to spend it in various areas. So if it comes to our attention—somebody says, "Hey, this program was supposed to do X and it's not doing X,"—we'll go in and investigate on our own, and then we will issue a special message to the Congress if we think there was an impoundment made that wasn't reported to the Congress.

That's basically our role under that legislation and there'll be periods where there are no special messages to the Congress, there'll be other times that there are messages over time, and there'll be some where we've identified things that should have been reported to the Congress that weren't. We also have responsibility from our earlier role to make sure the agencies don't spend more than they're supposed to by the Congress, and that's called an anti-deficiency violation. And Congress asked us in recent times to keep a section on our website of all antideficiency violations, which we do do.

Kevin Kosar:

That's terrific.

GAO's duties continue to expand. I recall in the mid- to late-1990s, when Congress passed the Congressional Review Act, which is a vehicle by which Congress can strike down regulations, GAO was given additional reporting requirements related to regulations. But then 2004, GAO got its then new name, no longer was it the General Accounting Office, and it became the Government Accountability Office. With that, what other duties were added on?

Gene Dodaro:

Actually the name change, Kevin, was done to catch up with the past. As you've mentioned, a lot happened between 1921 and 2004. Our expansion into program evaluation, our expansion into the Budget Control and Impoundment Act, the Competition In Contracting Act and the bid protest area. And so the General Accounting Office didn't fit us anymore, and it was impediment to recruiting the multidisciplinary task force that we need to do. People would say, "Well why do I want to go work there? I'm not an accountant. I don't want to work for the General Accounting Office." In fact, all but maybe 10% of our people are not accountants right now. And so we changed the name in order to help us with recruiting and also to better explain to new members of Congress and staff that our role was well beyond the accounting functions that were our origins 100 years ago and that we've evolved over time to a very multidisciplinary agency that does work across the federal government on anything the federal government's doing or thinking about doing.

So we have a very wide portfolio. We provide support to over 90% of the standing committees of the Congress, and we have subject area experts in every part of the federal government now, whether it's defense, healthcare, environment, etc. We have then technical specialists, actuary scientists, information technology, cybersecurity specialists, etc. And so we have a very wide range of disciplines. And all our work now mostly is putting together interdisciplinary teams in order to carry out the audits and functions that we do across the government and issue the hundreds of reports that we issue every year and provide expert witnesses to the Congress for committees or whatever. So the name change, and it's really worked. It's really worked. It's made it easier to recruit. We have no problems recruiting high talented people. Most of our people have advanced degrees. We just have a terrific, terrific workforce. In fact, in the last three years in a row now, we've been ranked the top place to work in the federal government for midsized agencies. And that further helps in recruiting.

Kevin Kosar:

Well perhaps reflecting the old dictum, “no good deeded goes unpunished,” in 2018, Congress gave you yet another task to do. It asked you to pick up responsibilities that were similar to those that were once handled by the Office of Technology Assessment, an agency in the legislative branch that was abolished back in 1995. What's this new line of work like?

Gene Dodaro:

Excellent question, Kevin. That was sort of evolving over time.

In the early 2000's, we were asked to do a pilot to see if we could do technology assessments similar to what the Office of Technology Assessment had done. And then I started hiring additional people. In fact, I hired our first chief scientist back in 2008. So we were sort of growing that function for a while because we needed it to carry out our normal responsibilities as well as do these special projects that Congress had asked us to pilot. But as technology has evolved faster than any time in humankind, Congress was really asked to make a decision whether do we recreate the Office of Technology assessment, or do we bolster the capabilities that GAO has been growing over this period of time? And they went with that option.

And so in 2018, it created a special team for Science Technology Assessments and Analytics, we were able to populate that team with many people in GAO were already working on some of these things, but from 2019 to up to 2023, most recently, we've tripled the size of that team in GAO and recruiting a lot more people,...