Legislation has been introduced in the Senate designed to reduce the number of relatively superfluous GAO reviews requested by Congress.
Introduced by Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., the bill – the GAO Mandates Revision Act, S-3315 – is co-sponsored by the leadership of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Susan Collins, R-Maine and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.
According to Carper, sometimes Congress requests annual GAO reviews with no end date and in some cases programs under study could end or the importance of the review might wane but GAO is obligated to carry them out anyway. This leads to duplicative or unnecessary work for GAO, which often results in long delays for Congress to receive new work or saps resources away from reviews and audits of higher importance.
The bill lists eight projects proposed by GAO to cancel or modify, including an annual export-import allowance program for Haiti that is basically dormant, as well as a financial audit of the American Battle Monuments Commission, which has plans to conduct its own financial audit.
