A bipartisan pair of lawmakers have introduced a bill that would compel Congress to cement into law recommendations from its top watchdog.
Republican Rep. Frank Guinta and Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema introduced the Auditing United States Departments to Insulate Taxpayers, or AUDIT, Act last week amid concerns over out-of-control government spending.
“It’s incredibly important to spend taxpayer money efficiently and wisely,” Guinta told the Washington Examiner.
The New Hampshire Republican said wasteful spending is “one of the biggest complaints I hear from my constituents back home.”
“I was a former mayor of Manchester, and part of my job was to find efficiencies in government and how to spend taxpayer money more efficiently,” Guinta said.
His bill would force lawmakers to hold hearings that would weigh the merits of recommendations from the Government Accountability Office. Under the Audit Act, Congress would have a two-year window to put forward legislation that addressed GAO recommendations.
The government watchdog’s suggestions for ways to stem waste, fraud and abuse could potentially save taxpayers tens of billions of dollars a year.
But the recommendations are often ignored, with 7,854 still awaiting action from the agencies involved.
While the bipartisan bill wouldn’t force lawmakers to address recommendations that have already been made, it would require them to confront recommendations attached to new reports.
“We hear so many people talking about waste, fraud and abuse, but we don’t put GAO reports into action,” Guinta said. “It’s a good tool to identify, in an apolitical way, where the government is doing well and where it isn’t.”
