House Bill Would Lay Waste to Congress's Watchdogs and Information Experts
Appropriators propose a 50% cut to GAO, 12% cut to the Library of Congress
The House of Representatives is poised to inflict catastrophic damage on its own institutional capacity. Today, the House Appropriations Committee released its proposed funding levels for the Legislative Branch, which would slash the Government Accountability Office’s budget by 50 percent and the Library of Congress by 12 percent from FY 2024 levels.
These two nonpartisan agencies are essential to Congress’s ability to conduct oversight and develop informed public policy. If enacted, these cuts would dismantle Congress’s core analytic and investigative capabilities, leaving the institution severely debilitated and far less able to fulfill its constitutional responsibilities.
Here is the draft bill text and the committee's summary of the $6.7 billion bill.
What Happens Next in the House and Senate
The bill released today will be considered by the House Legislative Branch Appropriations subcommittee on Monday at 6 p.m. and by the full House Appropriations Committee on Thursday at 10 a.m.
Should the measure pass the House the Senate still must agree. The upper chamber historically has been more reluctant to make such devastating cuts. However, Congress has enacted dramatic reductions before. During the Gingrich-era revolution in the mid-1990s, Congress cut Legislative branch agencies and committees by roughly 25%. In the early 2010s, the House suffered additional cuts of about 10%. These decisions were made to reinforce party rhetoric about spending as well as to shift where power is exercised.
A History of Self-Inflicted Harm
When Congress cut its funding previously, it harmed the Legislative branch as an institution. One result was the transfer of power to the Executive branch. Another was to centralize power in the House of Representatives in the hands of House leadership at the expense of committees and the rank-and-file. Congress has spent the last thirty years trying to undo the damage.
During that time, funding for non-defense discretionary spending (i.e., money for the government not counting the military) grew at twice the rate of the Legislative branch, increasing the challenge for Congress to oversee the entirety of government.
This bill anticipates top line spending of $6.7 billion, $1.3 billion below the total amount requested by the offices and agencies.
In addition, the small pot of money Congress makes available to the Legislative branch has increasingly been devoted to security and buildings at the expense of everything else, including policymaking. Funding for the Capitol Police and Architect doubled from 12 to 24 percent of Legislative branch spending from 2000 to FY 2025. This bill contains a significant increase for the Capitol Police.
Congress Falling Further Behind
The following chart shows federal spending for major entities inside the Legislative Branch. We do not have numbers for FY 2026 Senate spending as they have not yet introduced their bill and the House and Senate defer to one another on funding levels for the chambers. I also have included the funding levels requested by those entities.
The analysis compares the FY 2024 enacted levels against the FY 2026 subcommittee mark. Congress enacted a CR for FY 2025. Most agencies stayed flat in FY 2025, except for a handful of agencies (such as the Capitol Police). Accordingly, it makes sense to compare funding levels of the last two years.
GAO's appropriated funding level would decrease from $828 million to $415 million, a 50 percent cut. At GAO, we could see firings of several thousand staff.
The Library of Congress's appropriated funding level would decrease from $869 million to $767 million, a 12 percent cut. Firings at the Library of Congress would likely include hundreds of people.
The Capitol Police's appropriated funding level would increase from $807 million to $891 million, a 10 percent increase. They have a long history of receiving disproportionate funding increases. USCP funding levels in 2015 were $473 million; in 2005 they were $383 million; in 1995 they were $150 million. (All numbers adjusted for inflation.) As I've discussed elsewhere, protecting Congress should start with police reform.
Why the House Is Doing This
We do not yet know why House appropriators are pushing forward such an unbalanced resolution, but there is some basis on which to speculate.
It is likely that these funding decisions are being driven by House leadership. In recent years Legislative branch appropriators have been good stewards of funding for the Legislative branch. These brobdingnagian cuts are uncharacteristic of their work.
The GAO
Legislative branch hearings over the last month or so have seen repeated attacks by some Republican members aimed at GAO and CBO. In addition, we have seen Republican members targeting GAO on the floor and in the press.
The main criticism of GAO arises from Republican efforts to undo California's clean air regulations. My friend Soren Dayton explains this issue well.
In essence, the EPA granted California a waiver to implement its own emissions requirements that promote electrical vehicles. The Trump administration and congressional Republicans want to undo the waiver. They could not get sixty votes in the Senate. They wish to lower the Senate vote threshold to 51 and are using the Congressional Review Act to do so. To make it work, they must declare the EPA waiver is a "rule," thus subject to the CRA.
GAO, which oversees the CRA and has independent authority to provide legal opinions, responded to a congressional inquiry and said this is improper. The Senate parliamentarian agreed. Senators, who are loath to attack the parliamentarian right now, made GAO the fall guy and voted to repeal the waiver by 51-44.
The Library of Congress
President Trump fired the Librarian of Congress and (in my view unlawfully) tried to take over that agency. Speculation is that the Trump administration wished to seize control of the Copyright Office, located inside the Library, because of a draft report on Artificial Intelligence. Various conservative factions are fighting over whether its fair use to use copyrighted information as AI training data and this was a power grab.
The repulse of the take-over effort by the Library (and the Legislative branch) triggered Trump's allies to accuse the Library of various unsavory behaviors. His spokesperson falsely accused the Librarian of allowing "inappropriate books in the library for children" and having done "quite concerning things … in the pursuit of D.E.I."
Trump's co-partisans in the House are rushing in to show their loyalty to the administration. In addition, there is a pattern of attacking libraries around the country. This may be viewed as a symbolic victory.
The Legislative Branch Agencies
In both instances, GAO and the Library are following the directives issued by Congress.
GAO provides non-partisan advice to Congress on a range of issues: reducing government waste, fraud, and abuse; legal advice, overseeing impoundment, and addressing bid protests.
The Library of Congress is the nation's biggest Library as well as a repository of expert policy support. I should note that it does not appear that funding has been cut for the Congressional Research Service, but for "salaries and expenses." I believe this cut would undermine the workings of the Law Library, which provides expert advice to Congress on foreign law, as well as the Library's ability to collect books and other documents.
I am not suggesting that GAO and the Library are perfect. I have my own list of reforms for both agencies. I've seen GAO's Gene Dodaro and the Library's Carla Hayden testify before Congress many times. I've had the opportunity to meet with GAO's Gene Dodaro and found him and his staff hard working, honest, non-partisan public servants. I previously worked in the Library of Congress, and while I have had my differences with some in management, its staff are excellent, non-partisan public servants meeting the needs of Congress. Acting Librarian of Congress Robert Newlen is a fine civil servant and worthy of Congress's trust.
The Consequences
The Government Accountability Office saves taxpayers money. It has a 130:1 return on investment. The proposed $410 million dollar cut would result in $53 billion of waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government gone undetected. The totality of the Legislative branch costs taxpayers around $7 billion annually. In other words, the "savings" to taxpayers of the cuts to GAO would far exceed the cost of funding the entirety of the Legislative branch by a factor of eight.
GAO plays a key in advising leadership and congressional committees. GAO follows a priority order in who it can support: It generates reports required by law, requested by leadership, then by committee chairs (on a bipartisan basis), and then finally rank-and-file. GAO has not had sufficient funds to support requests from the rank-and-file in decades. It's likely that congressional committees would bear the brunt of this reduction.
GAO has a major role to play in overseeing impoundment. As the Executive branch creates novel theories to test Congress's power of the purse, GAO would be severely weakened and potentially unable to oversee and address circumstances where the Executive branch fails to spend money that Congress has appropriated.
The Library of Congress will likely find itself unable to provide significant services to Congress and the American people, including providing advice on international laws, maintaining America's collection of books and historical documents, and opening its doors to everyone.
The most notable consequence is not financial, however. Punishing GAO and the Library for doing their jobs sends a clear message: politics are more important than policy.
We have seen this before. In the mid-90s, one reason Gingrich went after the GAO, defunded the Office of Technology Assessment, and took a swipe at the Congressional Research Service was because they stood as non-partisan truth-tellers. They did their jobs as Congress directed, without fear or favor.
Those that survived Gingrich's purge became far less likely to tell inconvenient truths. They swaddled their analysis with caveats and superfluous verbiage to fend off political attacks. If you want these agencies to be more bold in their analysis and fully live up to their mission, they cannot be made susceptible to the political winds and to appease partisan aims.
This bill may be a partisan shot across the bow, intended to scare but not to kill. I'll keep watching the process and digging in on the details. Let's hope Congress comes to its senses.