On Tuesday, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will hold a hearing on the Government Accountability Office's high-risk list, which includes areas across the federal government that are "vulnerable to waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement, or that need broad reform." The nonpartisan watchdog agency updates this list every two years. The 2023 report included 37 high-risk areas, including nine problems dating back to the 1990s.
The GAO's ongoing work identifying high-risk areas in the federal government is a valuable project for Congress and American taxpayers. The 2023 report estimated that federal agencies' efforts to address these problem areas have resulted in "$100 billion in financial benefits" since 2021. As I have written and testified over the past six years, GAO's ongoing work dramatically benefits the nation. The dollars that Congress provides to GAO are among the best it spends. Last year, the Comptroller General estimated that the office's work resulted in $76 in savings for each dollar provided to GAO, which is an impressive return on investment (ROI).
However, the Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency have demonstrated a new approach to cutting government waste. Committee Chairman James Comer framed Wednesday's hearing as an opportunity to support these efforts. To that end, the committee can ask the Comptroller General questions about GAO's ongoing oversight work to identify ways their nonpartisan oversight can yield more value for American taxpayers.
Exploring how to improve GAO is particularly timely since the Comptroller General's 15-year term is ending this year. With input from Congress, President Trump will choose the next Comptroller General.
Here are five questions that members of the committee should ask.
Why are federal agencies ignoring so many of GAO's recommendations?
Only 70 percent of the recommendations GAO made in 2020 were implemented after four years, well below GAO's target goal of 80 percent. As the figure below shows, the four-year implementation rate has dropped over the past five years. GAO has written that recommendations remaining open after four years "are less likely to be implemented in subsequent years."
Ensuring that federal agencies enact GAO's recommendations promptly could cut substantial waste from the federal budget. Today, there are over 5,300 open recommendations. With the Trump administration and DOGE now working to cut waste and improve agencies' operations, GAO should have a unique opportunity to ensure that its past and future recommendations are answered.
Why is GAO's return on investment declining, and how can that trend be reversed?
Since 2002, GAO's work has resulted in $1.45 trillion in financial benefits for the federal government, which is impressive for an agency that spends less than $1 billion annually. However, over the past four years, GAO's annual ROI has declined from prior levels.
How can Congress and GAO reverse this trend? Increasing GAO's ROI and achieving more taxpayer savings is a bipartisan priority on Capitol Hill. In 2022, Congress enacted the Improving Government for America's Taxpayers Act, requiring GAO to estimate what savings Congress could achieve by answering GAO's recommendations. That year, the Appropriations Committee also told GAO to calculate how much taxpayers could save if its open recommendations were implemented. GAO told Congress that the federal government could save between $106 and $208 billion and that a dozen of its suggestions for Congress could save $1 billion or more (including a change to Medicare payment structures that could save $141 billion). Last year, the House Appropriations Committee directed GAO to establish a pilot project to set "timeframes" for new recommendations to "hold agencies accountable for implementing them in a timely way." Another strategy could be to enlist the Congressional Budget Office to estimate potential savings associated with open recommendations. The committee should ask the Comptroller General about these congressionally mandated strategies to increase the office's ROI and ask for his ideas for reversing this trend.
What precisely does GAO recommend Congress do to prevent fraud and misspending?
Given the Trump administration and DOGE's focus on reducing government waste, GAO has an opportunity to provide Congress and the White House with recommendations to save hundreds of billions by reducing fraud and misspending across federal agencies. Last year, GAO warned that the government wastes between $233 billion to $531 billion on fraud. GAO has also been tracking improper payments for decades, a problem that totaled $2.7 trillion over the past 20 years. In 2022, the House Appropriations Committee told GAO to "provide quarterly purports to the Committee on its ongoing oversight of improper payments and recommendations for legislative or technical opportunities to improve payment integrity." While GAO has made many recommendations to Congress and federal agencies to improve program integrity and reduce misspending, in 2025, there is a unique window of opportunity for legislative and executive branch reform to achieve hundreds of billions in savings. Congress should ask the Comptroller General to prioritize its recommendations and provide specific legislative or technical assistance to address this costly problem.
Will GAO's employees come back to the office?
In November, GAO issued a report examining telework and identified problems with how several agencies managed their workers who were not in the office. However, in 2023, GAO established an agreement with the union representing GAO employees to formalize remote work practices for its employees. According to a 2024 survey of GAO employees, 38 percent of GAO employees favored fully remote work, and 61 percent favored some form of telework option. Based on this information, it is reasonable for the committee to assume that most of GAO's staff routinely does not work in the office. Lawmakers should ask for exact numbers of the percentage of GAO staff who work in the office regularly. In January, GAO's executive committee notified employees that President Trump's executive orders requiring a return to the office do not apply to GAO staff, given that GAO is an office within the Legislative Branch.Congress should ask the Comptroller General for data about the number and percentage of GAO staff working from home, as well as detailed information about GAO employees working remotely and whether their locality pay is appropriate given their location. (Some or perhaps many GAO employees may receive inaccurate pay rates given their current working location.) Congress or the Comptroller General should refer this matter to the GAO Inspector General for review.
In addition, lawmakers should ask the Comptroller General his personal view on the transition to widespread work from home and if it has contributed to GAO's declining ROI since the pandemic. Further, the committee should question the Comptroller General about GAO's labor agreement and employment rules and whether statutory changes are needed to require them to return to the office regularly.
How is GAO using technology to improve government oversight?
In 2019, GAO launched a Science, Technology Assessment, and Analytics (STAA) team. After six years, Congress should ask the GAO to update the committee on the work of the STAA and its plans for using technology to enhance and modernize oversight and auditing. Recent technological innovations, including artificial intelligence and large language models, create new opportunities for GAO to improve its work and value. For example, Congress could consider ways for GAO to use AI to support regulatory oversight and retrospective regulatory review or to conduct more proactive auditing to prevent misspending and improve program integrity. In addition to these potential plans for GAO's use of AI, Congress should also ask the Comptroller General how federal agencies could better structure data and information to use technology to improve their auditing work.
