(The Center Square) – The U.S. Government Accountability Office, the research arm of Congress, wants $916 million for fiscal year 2025, a fraction of the $70.4 billion in financial benefits the GAO said it provided last year.
The agency said the budget request, plus $59.8 million in offsets and supplemental appropriations, will allow it to maintain its workforce of 3,600 full-time equivalents. The budget request is a 12.8% increase over fiscal year 2024 levels.
“Given the broad scope of issues the Congress relies on us to investigate and audit, our employees’ collective expertise ranges from the hard sciences to public policy and administration to information technology, economics, law, financial auditing and much more,” Comptroller General Gene Dodaro said during testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch, Committee on Appropriations. “We also have people that possess deep subject area knowledge of virtually all major facets of government from defense to health care to natural resource management, for example.”
The agency said that its work yielded $70.4 billion in financial benefits in fiscal year 2023. That’s a return of about $84 for every dollar invested, according to the agency.
