Fighting Waste by Shrinking the Watchdog

House appropriators have a useful assignment for the Government Accountability Office: help eliminate waste, fraud and abuse. In the same report, they propose taking $200 million out of its budget. Apparently the first suspicious expense is somebody checking the expenses.

That proposed cut is not law. The immediate squeeze is less theatrical. GAO’s direct appropriation was $811.894 million in both fiscal 2025 and 2026. Congress’s current stopgap carries forward fiscal 2026 operating rates through December 11 unless superseded. Flat dollars sound reassuring until salaries, health insurance and everything else decline to remain flat out of respect for the spreadsheet.

On October 27, The Washington Sun reported that GAO had offered voluntary separation incentives and expected to approve 200 departures. Expected approvals are not completed exits, and the agency said the number could change. Options include buyouts of up to $25,000, early retirement or roughly three months of paid leave before departure. The reported staff memo says “we do not expect our operations will be adversely affected,” citing departures spread across the workforce and the ability to redistribute responsibilities. The remaining employees apparently come with expandable calendars.

This is Congress’s watchdog, not an executive agency Trump can simply order to shrink. Congress controls its appropriations. The House committee’s fiscal 2027 proposal would reduce direct funding to $611.894 million. For now, that remains a proposal, not the explanation for a $200 million hole already dug in GAO’s accounts. Washington supplies enough actual budget trouble without charging it for legislation that has not passed.

GAO’s March 18 budget testimony makes the existing pressure concrete. Even its requested increase to about $860 million for fiscal 2027 would support only 3,210 full-time equivalents, against 3,353 in its fiscal 2026 budget table. Those are staffing-capacity figures, not a count of people who have accepted this month’s offer. GAO cites inflation and personnel costs; its table also shows declining offsets, so the requested appropriation increase would not translate into an equivalent increase in total resources.

There is a reasonable management case here. Voluntary exits can be preferable to layoffs. GAO spokesperson Sarah Kaczmarek told the Sun the incentives were a “prudent approach” to maintaining capacity for congressional priorities. GAO also proposes better technology and staff redeployment. House appropriators favor data-sharing and wider implementation of existing recommendations. None of that is inherently foolish. It also does not establish that fewer staff can deliver the same work on time.

The Sun’s delay evidence is narrower than a national performance audit: one unnamed employee said congressional requests were waiting weeks or months for available staff. The employee also cited agency-access problems. That does not prove these prospective departures caused those waits. It does make the no-harm assurance worth testing against actual queues and completion times. Congress should demand that accounting while deciding what capacity to fund. Otherwise, its anti-waste policy amounts to requesting an inspection, reducing the inspection staff, and congratulating itself on the smaller invoice.