Bipartisan lawmakers on Capitol Hill are reportedly pressuring the Government Accountability Office, their nonpartisan watchdog agency, to sue the Trump administration in a push to reassert the congressional power of the purse.
The GAO has repeatedly found that the administration violated the law by withholding congressionally appropriated funds.
The watchdog agency said last week that the White House decision to unilaterally cancel $810 million in previously appropriated funding is illegal. And it said in a report this week that the administration violated the law when it failed to spend more than $78 million in 2025 research grant funding that Congress had provided for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, part of the Department of Health and Human Services. The withholding of funds came after the administration slashed staff at the health agency, including personnel responsible for grant administration. The White House insists that its budget moves are legal.
Democrats welcomed the latest GAO findings. “This decision confirms what we’ve long known: President Trump lit health research funding on fire last year, and it’s clear as day he’s just done the same again this year,” Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a statement. Murray noted that the White House recently announced its intention to claw back another $28 million in AHRQ funding as part of a larger pocket rescission.
Murray also called on Republicans to join in an effort to have Congress reassert its control over federal spending. “It’s past time Congress imposes real consequences on this administration for killing lifesaving health research,” she said.
Some Republicans are reportedly joining in that effort, pressing for GAO to sue the administration. “A Senate Republican aide confirmed there has been a push to get GAO to sue the administration, particularly after appropriators fended off an effort by the Trump administration to cut the watchdog agency’s budget in half,” the Washington Sun’s Eric Katz reported on Thursday.
The Republican chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee has also pushed back against administration clawbacks that she calls “unlawful,” and she told reporters recently that GAO can challenge the administration in court.
“They are empowered to sue,” Sen. Susan Collins said, according to Politico. “I think the biggest problem is that we have an acting director of the GAO, who understandably is wary of suing the administration without direct congressional approval.”
GAO’s power to sue: The Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 granted the comptroller general the power to sue the president over the failure to properly spend obligated funds — and a preliminary Supreme Court ruling last year suggested that only the GAO chief, and not outside groups, could bring such a legal challenge. But any push to have GAO challenge the administration in court is complicated by the agency’s lack of a permanent leader since Comptroller General Gene Dodaro’s term expired at the end of last year.
The process of finding a permanent comptroller general, who would be nominated for a 15-year term, involves a bipartisan, 10-member congressional commission, which is supposed to recommend at least three qualified candidates to the president, who can also request additional names. The Senate must ultimately confirm the individual nominated by the president. But in this case, the congressional commission reportedly has yet to convene to find a replacement for Dodaro.
The White House’s preferred pick? The White House has floated nominating Eric Ueland, the deputy to Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, to head GAO, according to the Sun’s Katz. Ueland is also the acting administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development, which the Trump administration has largely dismantled, and had been acting director of the Office of Government Ethics until last December.
Ueland would be sure to face a difficult confirmation fight if he is nominated to be comptroller general, the GAO’s leader.
“If nominated and confirmed to lead the legislative branch’s watchdog agency, Ueland himself would get to decide whether to hold the administration accountable for work he previously was a part of,” Katz notes. He adds: “Placing a White House official into GAO leadership has the potential to end any threat of a lawsuit and to upend the watchdog agency altogether.”