Congress Fights Back...Against Congress

Congressional Republicans threaten their own institutions to protect Trump

Saturn Devouring His Son, by Goya

The broad story of the second Trump era has been of two inverse and related trends: the growth of a personalist Presidency, and the decline of state capacity. A system built on loyalty to one man cannot tolerate institutions bound by other values, and so it must break them. This pattern has been observed again and again in the executive branch, which is unsurprising.

But now we see Trump’s loyalists in Congress target their own legislative institutions for being unwilling to bend the knee.

The latest, but by no means only example is the proposed House Republican budget that would cut in half funding the Government Accountability Office. GAO is the non-partisan legislative watchdog that gives Congress the capacity to investigate what the executive branch is up to. GAO does careful investigative reports on the topics that Congress determines are important. For example, DOGE might have actually been moderately effective if it paid attention to GAO’s High Risk series documenting the biggest challenges to making the government effective.

The basic job of institutions is to defend their existence. Right now, Congress is failing to do that. Ah, you might think, blind defense of outdated institutions is a flaw. Maybe sometimes. But not here. Congress — and more specifically Congressional Republicans — has been largely acquiescent to Trump, failing its role as a check against an executive branch that badly needs checking. And it is now attacking the Congressional capacities that allow it to fulfill it’s constitutional role.

So lets understand what is happening, and more importantly, why it is happening.

Historically, Congress Upgraded its Capacity To Check the Presidency

Congress has generally sought to match the growth of presidential power with it’s own investments in capacity, albeit on a smaller scale. The Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 that gave the President the Bureau of the Budget also established the GAO. The Nixon-era conversion of the Bureau of the Budget into the more powerful Office of Management and Budget saw Congress create the Congressional Budget Office to upgrade its analytical resources. When Congress gave President Obama new spending authority with the stimulus bill, they also directed GAO to hire new limited term staff to provide additional oversight.

The Congressional record is not perfect. Newt Gingrich killed the Office of Technology Assessment in 1995 at a time when having legislative specialists advise about technology would have been a good idea. (GAO picked up some of that work, despite also suffering from Gingrich-era cuts).

The conventional wisdom is that Congress still lacks sufficient capacity. One reason for this is that legislative staffers, i.e. the people who work directly with members of Congress are a) systematically underpaid and b) do not stay in office long. This makes the permanent staff at places like CBO and GAO all the more important, since these organizations provide the resources and stability for staff to invest in building expertise and institutional memory.

Congress Used to Push Back Against Presidents Trying to Control it’s Agencies

In general, Congressional capacities have lagged the executive branch, but mostly Congress has tried not to get left too far behind. It has also resisted efforts by the President to undermine Congressional independence. For example, when the GAO was first proposed, President Woodrow Wilson wanted to be able to remove its head, the Comptroller General. Congress said no. President Reagan pushed Congressional Republicans to remove Alice Rivlin, the head of CBO, but Republican leaders refused.

Trump Opposes Congressional Oversight

Not surprisingly, Presidents are often not a big fan of Congressional oversight that finds scandals in their administration, or disagrees with their budget or economic estimates.

This basic pattern is an order of magnitude worse under Trump. Actual formal mechanisms of accountability are the enemy of a regime built around loyalty. This is why Trump has fired Inspectors Generals, and targeted General Counsels for removal. Trump also believes he ought to be able to fire any official that displeases him, as he did with the head of the Library of Congress and leaders of independent agencies.

What did CBO do to displease Trump? It pointed out that Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill simply does not add up. CBO has confirmed what independent analysis has shown. The bill is a regressive transfer of resources from the poorest to the richest that will cause a lot of people to lose Medicaid.

What happened next?

The White House launched a campaign to discredit CBO, saying it was run by Democrats. Never mind that the head of CBO, Phillip Swagel, is a former Bush appointee chosen by Republican lawmakers.

What did the GAO do? It has investigated Trump’s abuses of Presidential power. In his first term, they pointed out that his impoundment of funds meant for Ukraine, which led to his first impeachment, was illegal. This conflict about legislative and executive power has become a full-blown constitutional battle in Trump’s second term. Trump and his budget chief, Russ Vought, insist that impoundment is legal. And the GAO is pursuing dozens of investigations into Trump withholding Congressional spending. As the GAO finds that Trump is again breaking the law, it embarrasses not just Trump, but the Republicans who control Congress for failing to do anything about Trump usurping their powers.

What happened next?

The White House said it would no longer co-operate with GAO investigations into whether it was breaking the law. That’s a nice option to have when you stop viewing the law as a binding constraint, or other branches of government as relevant. (See also Trump officials ignoring court orders).

The Trump administration also sent DOGE to take control of GAO, as it had with independent agencies. DOGE was sent packing, but the message was unmistakable: GAO had a target on its back.

Congressional Republicans are Choosing Trump Over Their Own Institution - and Responsibilities

The Trump approach to Congressional agencies are at once norm-breaking and unsurprising. You can see some echoes on the Reagan’s attacks on CBO for not going along with their unrealistic budget scenarios.

What is different, this time, is the degree to which Congressional Republicans are willing to make good on Trump’s threats.

Rather than side with their own institutions Speaker Mike Johnson tried to smear CBO as unreliable and repeated the White House talking points. And the White House is there to cheer them on, falsely claiming the GAO and CBO are partisan institutions.

And now GAO is in the crosshairs. The legislation that would cut GAO’s budget would also ban it from suing the executive branch for impounding funds, unless the Republican majority agrees. The budget cuts and Congressional ability to provide oversight of Trump are intertwined.

Professor Phil Joyce, an expert on Congressional agencies, noted that GAO had seen cuts before, but part of broader Gingrich-era cuts in spending, rather than being singled out for punishment:

GAO is in a very vulnerable position. It is clear that the motivation for cutting the GAO budget has little to do with saving money, and everything to do with attempting to further harm the capacity of any part of the government to challenge what the administration wants to do, particularly with respect to impoundments.

“It Is All About Retribution”

Indeed, it is incredibly clear the cuts to GAO are not about saving money:

• The overall budget request for Congressional agencies is slightly smaller than before, but nothing like the scale of the cuts GAO would face

• Some parts of Congress — notably the Capitol Police - are seeing large increases.

• The savings from GAO cuts represent 0.006 percent of federal spending.

• Spending on GAO generates large returns because of its focus on waste. In 2024, every $1 invested in GAO generated about $76 in financial benefits, totaling $67.5 billion in financial benefits. The long term average return on investment is even better: $123 for every dollar invested for the past six years.

I also asked Chris Mihm for his perspective. Mihm was the long-time managing director for strategic issues at GAO, and so knows the organization intimately well. He told me:

Certainly, among the analytic arms of Congress, significant cuts are unusual because Congress sees the value in our work…The challenge now of course (and IRS, SSA, USAID, NIH, etc all face the same problem) is that the traditional arguments do not work. Business cases for increases or warnings about cuts are typically based on what it would mean in terms of mission performance and the ability to support the Congress with independent, timely, fact-based analysis. But when the clear intent of the cuts is to undermine all of that, claiming that cuts will hurt the agency's ability to support the Congress only reinforce the political reason for the cuts. I don't know how GAO can respond to this since it is all about retribution and not deficit reduction, poor performance, or other arguments that you can at least respond to with data.

The Next Battle: Appointing the Comptroller General

Historically, GAO and CBO have been very careful to be responsive to both parties. So wiser heads might prevail, and there are multiple steps before the proposed cuts to GAO would be implemented.

But even if the budget cuts do not happen, there is another route to politicize GAO. Historically, Congress has also cared enough about institutional capacity to pick credible and widely-respected actors to lead CBO and GAO.

But that commitment to competence may no longer hold. The Comptroller General is chosen by Trump from a list of names presented to him from Congress. (Mark Paoletta, the OMB General Counsel who has offered a legal rationale for Trump’s impoundments has said that the President should fully control the hiring process at GAO). That process will happen during the current Congress, and with GOP majorities, there will be strong pressure to find a Comptroller who prioritizes not upsetting Trump.

Trump and Vought are very much aware of the importance of this pick, and will try to shape the process. According to Joyce:

the biggest risk here is the appointment by the President and confirmation by the Senate of a new Comptroller General who has no interest in playing GAO's historical role of allowing the Congress to challenge the executive.

This would be good for Trump, but bad for Congress, and really bad for the rest of us seeking credible non-partisan sources of information to shape Congressional decisions. Mihm echoed these concerns:

Not to be over the top, but with a 15-year term, the wrong Comptroller General appointment could literally doom the agency. It would allow not just for no oversight for this term but for weaponized "oversight" for any subsequent Democratic Administration.

A partisan loyalist leading GAO might be more willing to explicitly attack a President, but it would also be less credible. Joyce pointed out:

In the end this is in my mind just another example of a short-sighted action by the Congress in acquiescing to the destruction of its own capacity. And even if I were a partisan Republican, I might at some point ask whether the credibility — and the ability to allow the Congress to challenge the executive — might be useful to me someday when there is once again a Democratic President. This is not to mention the fact that anyone who believes in the separation of powers should be alarmed at this attempt to weaken the Congress.

A functional legislative body would be willing to set aside partisan differences to protect its long term capacity to fulfill it’s constitutional role. This used to be the case, more or less, but it no longer the case under current Republican leadership, especially on the House side.

And why are Congressional Republicans undermining Congress? To muddy the waters about a deficit-busting wealth transfer from the poor to the rich. To block investigations of illegal Presidential actions that usurp Congressional power. To show fealty to a man who wants their institution to be wholly under his thumb. They give our institutions away so cheaply.