Unbalanced Powers
The saga of the Government Accountability Office tells the story of the Trump administration’s campaign for a unitary executive.
This article is part of an ongoing project by American Purpose at Persuasion on “The ‘Deep State’ and Its Discontents.” The series aims to analyze the modern administrative state and critique the political right’s radical attempts to dismantle it.
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As New York Times reporter Michael S. Schmidt wrote last fall, “We are now seeing how a truly unshackled Trump uses his power.” Outsiders have been asking: Are there any guardrails in the political system to rein in his use of power?
Back in 2019, Trump said, “I have Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” That’s not quite what the Constitution in general—or Article II on presidential power in particular—says. But it is what Trump believes, and it certainly is the way he has acted, from sending troops into American cities to starting a war in the Middle East without talking with anyone but the Israelis.
After more than a year of Trump 2.0, we can begin to see the patterns of power and the effectiveness of the guardrails. The courts are beginning to define “that’s too far” lines, but they’ve been slow and late to the game. On the other hand, Congress has been AWOL. And, in addition, the Trump administration has been working hard to shackle one of Congress’s most powerful oversight arms, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).
Trump himself doesn’t mention the “unitary executive” approach to presidential power (the idea that the president has sole power over the executive branch of government) that lies at the core of his “I have the right to do” pronouncement. But he and his top officials have certainly embraced it. He believes that Article II of the Constitution gives him the power to decide what happens to anything within the reach of the executive branch, with authority unchecked by the Article III branch, the courts, or the Article I branch, the Congress.
The courts have begun to prove him wrong. But challenges from the legislative branch have been tepid, at best. And that’s why the most recent assault on the GAO is so concerning.
Tired of Winning... in the Courts?
In his 2026 State of the Union Address, the president said, “We’re winning so much that we really don’t know what to do about it.” But the courts increasingly have had other ideas.
A judge threw out the administration’s attempt to subpoena Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell’s records for remodeling the Fed’s headquarters. Other judges tossed the indictments for former FBI Director James B. Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. A grand jury refused to indict six Democratic members of Congress, whom the Justice Department wanted to prosecute for sedition. In 1985, New York Judge Sol Wachtler said, “Any good prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.” Except, it seems, in the especially weak case against the lawmakers. Then, in February, the U.S. Supreme Court tossed out Trump’s tariffs in a 6-3 decision that found Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, both nominated by Trump himself, joining the majority.
Trump has had an increasingly poor Article III batting average, although several big cases are yet to be decided. Challenges are pending before the Court: on state mail-in ballot deadlines, limits on the ability of marijuana users to own guns, an effort to roll back birthright citizenship, and the debate over the president’s power to dismiss appointees to independent regulatory agencies. A couple of decisions could pull the balance of powers significantly back from the executive branch.
For now, though, the Trump administration has had several bad months in the courts, but aside from the decision on tariffs, the courts have been more of a slow roller-coaster brake in some areas than an anti-lock braking system keeping the president’s power in check. It has taken litigants a long time for the ponderous process to produce results, and dealing with fundamental questions like the balance of powers, one case at a time, is a very hard way to restrain Trump’s ambitions.
No Worries about Losing... in Congress
Article I of the Constitution, on the other hand, has barely proved more than a speed bump. The Democrats have managed to stage a couple of partial government shutdowns, but these have become so routine that they’ve lost much of their leverage. On presidential appointments, Trump has largely had his own way. Last summer’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act rolled the administration’s Year One agenda into, well, one big, beautiful bill.
Otherwise, Congress increasingly is where legislation goes to die. After the least productive Congress in recent memory at the end of the Biden administration, Congress is now on course to beat its own dismal record. That means Congress isn’t a place for originating or debating big, new ideas. Nor is it a place for killing them, since the administration—especially Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought—has found endless creative ways of running government without the inconvenience of passing policies through Congress.
A blizzard of executive orders has completely transformed the civil service system, including making it far easier to fire just about anyone. The OMB has gained policy control over independent regulatory commissions like the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission by requiring the agencies to send all their proposed rules through the OMB for approval before they can be issued. The OMB has gotten budgetary control over these agencies, and the president gave the Department of Justice the power to “provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch.” Trump has blown past all the modern records for the number of executive orders issued by year—more than twice as many on average as any president since World War II, and more than five times as many as any president after Reagan.
Trump’s actions have directly challenged the role of Congress in defining the scope of the agencies and the authority that their heads can exercise. Traditional constitutional practice has held that Congress sets the scope of decisions for the agencies. The Trump administration’s position has been that, once Congress passes a law creating an executive branch agency, a program managed within the executive branch, or designating money to fund them, it is the president’s power to decide just what the agency can or must do. This is a dramatic weakening of the balance of powers, but from Capitol Hill there has been nary a squeak.
Perhaps most importantly, the administration has asserted that it has the power to decide not to spend money that Congress has appropriated. (It’s worth remembering that appropriations are laws that Congress passes authorizing agencies to spend money on particular programs—and that, as legislation, the president signs them before they can take effect, so appropriations already carry the president’s assent.)
From the OMB’s point of view, it’s fine for Congress to approve the spending, and even for the president to sign off on the spending… but the administration has no responsibility to spend the money it agreed to. There were squeaks on Capitol Hill about these impoundments, including for the Head Start program, infrastructure projects, grants at the National Institutes of Health, incentives for electric vehicles, and FEMA funds for emergency shelters and food services.
Congress’s watchdog for these projects is the GAO, and the agency issued a series of reports calling out the White House in 2025. In a finding last September, the GAO wrote dryly, “Unless Congress has enacted a law providing otherwise, executive branch officials must take care to ensure that they prudently obligate appropriations during their period of availability.” The “take care” phrase is no accident; a foundation for the administration’s claims about the executive branch is Article II of the Constitution, which says the president “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” The GAO was setting up a debate over just what “take care” means.
The report went on to note that the “GAO’s role is [...] to protect congressional prerogatives,” and that FEMA’s decision not to spend the money, at the behest of the OMB, violated the Impoundment Control Act, put in place after the Nixon administration to prevent executive branch decisions that undermine the decisions of Congress.
From “Green Eyeshades” to Management Leverage
The GAO dates from 1921, when Congress decided it needed an agency to keep a better eye on the growth of government spending and debt following World War I. For the next 45 years, the GAO (then known as the General Accounting Office) checked government spending to make sure it was legal. It became known as the government’s “green eyeshade” agency, because its legions of accountants reviewed expenditures to make sure they were within the law.
After World War II, it became clear that the sheer volume of government spending could not possibly be overseen from any single legislative branch agency. The GAO began a broader monitoring not only of spending but also of programs. Then, as part of the post-Watergate reforms, Congress in 1974 transformed the budgetary process, including a crackdown on the impoundments that Nixon had been exercising, and broadened the GAO’s role as well. The agency brought in experts in areas ranging from public health to transportation and in processes from public policy to information technology.
Its policy role continued to broaden. In 2004, Congress changed the GAO’s name from the General Accounting Office to the Government Accountability Office. The GAO’s role shifted to focusing more on ensuring government accountability by exploring how government’s management could improve.
The GAO might be known mainly by insiders, but its work has become famous for its reports on the background of major news stories and segments on magazine shows like 60 Minutes. Last year, for example, the show featured analysis by the GAO on the amount of fraud in federal spending every year.
Since 1990, it has produced a “high-risk list” of programs especially prone to waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement. In 2025, the GAO reported nearly $759 billion in savings thanks to its work. For anyone interested in understanding how government really works—and how to get a handle on fraud—its detailed reports are must-reads.
Kneecapping the GAO
The GAO’s work has been impressive, but its work during the Trump administration on fraud and highly risky issues has produced only pushback. When it came to the Head Start money, the Department of Health and Human Services replied, “HHS did not impound Head Start funds and disputes the conclusion of the GAO report.” The department dragged its heels in responding to the shutdown of NIH grants. One of the curiosities of Elon Musk’s DOGE work, in fact, was its failure to focus on the GAO’s ready-made list of targets that would offer substantial reductions in fraud and increases in real savings.
Congress might have the power of the purse, but agency heads won’t spend the money if the OMB locks the purse back up. Congress might want to cut fraud, but it won’t succeed by ignoring the biggest targets like Medicare and Medicaid.
What is the recourse? Groups seeking to challenge the administration’s actions can file suit in court and use the GAO’s findings as evidence. Some have done so, but no group has succeeded in winning a case against impoundment. The GAO itself could sue, but its former head, Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, called such a suit a “last resort.”
With the end of Dodaro’s term in December 2025, the “last resort” became “no resort,” and the administration has been in no hurry to select a new comptroller general. A 1980 law provides that a commission of ten members of Congress recommends at least three potential new comptrollers to the president, who then gets to nominate one of them, subject to the Senate’s confirmation, for a fifteen-year term. That has put the GAO into a holding pattern, led by acting comptroller general Orice Williams Brown. Without a permanent head—and with the kind of new comptroller general the administration wants very much open to debate—the GAO has been very careful not to pick a fight with the administration.
The OMB’s Vought has taken advantage of the vacuum to push back even harder against the GAO in particular and Congress in general. In early March, he sent a memo to all the heads of executive departments and agencies asserting that previous government policies “have overly deferred to the direction and priorities of external agencies,” especially the GAO. Its views, he said, “are not binding on the Executive Branch.”
The GAO points to the law that says “a decision of the Comptroller General [...] is conclusive.” The OMB reads the law narrowly; it agrees that the GAO’s opinions are indeed binding, but only narrowly, on matters of accounting and the settlement of accounts. Otherwise, the OMB argues, neither Congress nor any of its agencies have the constitutional power to dictate how agencies interpret the law. (It’s a peculiar point of law, however, that the president gets to name the head of a major congressional agency.) As a result, the OMB contends, the GAO’s opinions are only advisory. And consistent with recent court decisions, the OMB concludes, the proper forum for deciding what the law means is the courts, not a legislative agency.
Unbalancing the Powers
For Constitutional experts—and fans of American history—the “unitary executive” debate is a truly interesting one. When we step past the broad debate to the particular tactics of how the Trump administration is using it to reshape American constitutional government—if we put clothes on it and take it outside in bright sunlight—the implications are stark.
The courts have put the brakes on Trumpism, but they have had only limited effect, in part because the courts decide one narrow case at a time, and they take a long time doing it, especially when a case goes all the way to the Supreme Court. That has given the administration a lot of flexibility to move fast on many fronts. There’s simply no way that the administration’s opponents can keep up or win enough legal challenges fast enough to significantly slow down the march of executive power.
The Constitution gives Congress much greater potential, but that requires Congress to use the power the Founders gave it in Article I, and there is no sign that the Republican majority has any intention of allowing that to happen. Congress has created a powerful policy arm in the GAO, which has proven it can move at something close to the speed of Trump. Led by Vought, however, the Trump administration has decided it can just ignore the GAO’s decisions and reports and reinforce that stand by refusing to appoint a new comptroller general. The GAO’s decisions can provide the fuel for court challenges, but that requires someone to bring a case, and groups interested in challenging the administration have often been outflanked and outgunned.
There will be endless debates for generations to come about how Trump has transformed America and its government. But the exclamation point on the shifting balance of powers will likely come from Vought’s moves to squash the role of the GAO and, in the process, defang one of the most important checks on the president’s power.
Donald F. Kettl is Professor Emeritus and Former Dean of the University of Maryland School of Public Policy. He is the author, with William D. Eggers, of Bridgebuilders: How Government Can Transcend Boundaries to Solve Big Problems.
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