The Trump administration is engaged on another front in its war with the federal bureaucracy, this time with the Government Accountability Office.
As an independent watchdog agency, the GAO largely operates outside of President Donald Trump‘s purview, and he cannot remove its director, Gene Dodaro. But that hasn’t stopped the White House and congressional Republicans from battling with the office.
“We’re going to assert the authority of the Senate today to use the Congressional Review Act on rules that have been submitted to Congress,” Sen. John Curtis (R-UT) told reporters last week. “The GAO does not have a veto power over that.”
At issue was a GAO ruling that the Trump administration violated the Impoundment Control Act by canceling $5 billion in funding for electric vehicle charging stations passed by the previous Congress. What Republicans argue is that they overturned a rule that was passed in December 2024, not funding per se.
The issue is one of dozens of investigations GAO has opened into the Trump administration violating the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which itself is in the White House’s crosshairs. The administration believes that the act is unconstitutional and that impoundment has been used by presidents for nearly 200 years.
Echoing that stance, last week, congressional Republicans ignored the GAO’s advice and ended what GOPers described as an EV mandate based on California emissions standards.
Russ Vought, Trump’s Office of Management and Budget director, bashed GAO afterward on X.
“Just so we are all clear over the next several months,” he wrote. “The Government Accountability Office or GAO is a quasi-independent arm of the legislative branch that played a partisan role in the first-term impeachment hoax. They are going to call everything an impoundment because they want to grind our work to manage taxpayer dollars effectively to a halt.”
“These are non-events with no consequence,” he added. “Rearview mirror stuff.”
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) said, “GAO has lost credibility as an independent body.”
Along with impoundment, the controversy centers on whether or not what Congress overturned was a rule or appropriations, and whether the Senate undermined the filibuster by doing so with only a simple majority vote.
Democrats were incensed and said Republicans would live to regret the action.
“Republicans will be breaking their commitment and will be going nuclear. And however they try to disguise their actions, this is nuclear,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said. “Make no mistake, Republicans have set a new precedent that will come back to haunt them and haunt this chamber. What goes around comes around.”
A GAO spokesperson said the agency is acting within its congressionally mandated scope.
“GAO is focused on its mission of supporting Congress in carrying out its constitutional duties, and we stand behind the quality of our work,” they said. “Our legal decisions do not take a position on the policy goals of a program. Our legal decisions only examine the procedural issues and compliance with the law to support Congress’s power of the purse and oversight functions.”
Trump and his team take an expansive view of the president’s powers, which has been met with resistance from federal judges, congressional Democrats, and independent agencies such as the GAO.
As with “woke” judges, the Trump administration says GAO has lost credibility as an independent organization and is acting in a partisan manner. The frustration dates to Trump’s first term, when GAO found in 2019 that he violated the Impoundment Control Act by trying to withhold security funds from Ukraine, which was at the heart of Democrats’ first impeachment case.
“The GAO basically makes recommendations on the law, on what’s being followed or not followed in terms of the Impoundment Control Act,” said Heritage Foundation scholar Richard Stern. “However, the question really is the legality of the Impoundment Control Act.”
Stern says that GAO is well within its purview to make recommendations to Congress, but argues that the agency is overstepping its bounds.
“I wouldn’t say that it’s actually inappropriate for them to be making these recommendations,” he said. “It’s just that the recommendations they’re making are kind of off the wall.”
Curtis agrees that precedent is being broken in this case, but argues that GAO broke it by making a ruling without being asked.
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“It is precedent-setting, but it is a precedent we need set as to exactly what the role is,” he told the Washington Examiner. “Congress should be able to speak on this.”
As to the idea that the GOP is nuking the filibuster, Curtis said, “It’s not even close.”