The Senate Appropriations Committee voted on July 10 to approve $812 million of spending for the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in fiscal year 2026 – pushing back against action by House lawmakers last month to cut GAO’s FY 2026 budget by 48 percent on a year-over-year basis.
The $812 million approved by the Senate panel for GAO compares to the $811.9 million in funding that the agency had received for FY 2025.
GAO’s Gene Dodaro has been stumping for a 15 percent year-over-year budget increase for FY 2026, to $933 million.
Where GAO’s final funding for FY 2026 comes out remains uncertain until House and Senate leaders reconcile their budget bills later this year.
In voting last month to nearly halve GAO’s budget, House Appropriations Committee Republicans’ justification for the cut was that GAO has become too “liberal,” and they claimed that the budget reductions would redirect GAO “to be reflective of congressional priorities and cutting funding to curtail the agency’s self-directed, liberal initiatives.”
That move was decried by House Democrats, including by Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., who is ranking member of the Appropriations Committee’s Legislative Brach Subcommittee which voted on the budget cuts.
“This reduction is a knee-jerk reaction to the GAO’s nearly 40 open investigations into whether the White House is illegally withholding money Congress previously appropriated,” the representative had said.
Keeping GAO’s FY 2026 funding in line with the FY 2025 level received bipartisan support this week, with the Senate committee approving its Legislative Branch Appropriations billion on a vote of 26-1.
“I do believe these bills are all a good compromise starting point – delivering critical resources to continue key programs and make targeted new investments, rejecting some of the truly harmful proposed cuts by the President, and steering clear of the extreme partisan policies he’s requested and that we’ve seen in some of the House bills over the last few years,” said Senate Appropriations ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., during the committee’s markup which included appropriations acts for other agencies.
On Thursday, more than 100 House Democrats wrote a letter to Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Appropriations Chair Tom Cole, R-Okla., requesting that the Senate reverse course on the GAO budget cuts while citing that future cost-savings would be at risk.
“There is strong support – from both lawmakers and the public – for making government more efficient, effective, and accountable – and reducing waste, fraud, and abuse,” wrote the House Democratic lawmakers. “But these goals cannot be met by decimating the very agency that helps identify and address inefficiencies in government.”
“The proposed funding reduction would result in a loss of more than 2,200 expert staff, hamstring critical oversight work, eliminate technical assistance to Congress, and delay or cancel ongoing investigations,” the letter continued. “Congress should be investing more in GAO’s work – not less.”
GAO serves as the investigative unit for the U.S. congress to examine “how taxpayer dollars are spent,” and provides agencies and Congress “objective, non-partisan, fact-based information to help the government save money and work more efficiently.”
A coalition of center-right organizations led by the R Street Institute also wrote to Senate leadership this week urging them to rethink reductions to GAO funding, noting that most legislative funding growth has gone to security-related items, while support for policymaking and oversight has stagnated and should not be cut further.
“The reduction of authorities for GAO and the funding cuts for GAO and the Library [of Congress] are unwarranted and unwise,” reads the letter. “These capacities already are severely strained and cannot withstand further cuts.”
“If anything, Congress should consider opportunities to bolster GAO’s return on investment,” the letter added.