SUBJECT: Background for 2 October Hearing on Bills Providing for Congressional Appointment of and Expanded Powers for the Comptroller General Expanding the powers of the Comptroller General, as envisioned in S. 2268, and the question of his status in the Federal system are directly related. It is the position of the Comptroller, expressed most recently in Staats v. Lynn, which is now before the U.S. District Court here, that he is neither an officer of the Legislature or the Executive. Rather, he argues, the Comptroller is an independent officer of the United States who may perform has performed and both Executive and Legislative functions for more than half a century. Underlying this position is the legislative history of the 1921 Budget and Accounting Act, which established the General Accounting Office. Clearly, the intent of that Act was for GAO to serve the Congress, not the Executive. And the Act itself stipulates that GAO "shall be independent of the Executive departments and under the direction of the Comptroller General," whose "executive" duties are to be exercised without direction from any other officer. - While the Act does not specify that the GAO is an agency of the Congress although subsequent enactments have designated the Comptroller General as "agent of Congress" for particular MEMORANDUM Page - purposes Comptroller General Staats has consistently followed the intent of the Act in identifying his office as an "arm of the Congress" in testimony before committees inquiring into the role of the GAO. His re sponses to questions from the Select Committee on Committees of the House, in 1973, are illustrative: Mr. SARBANES. Mr. Staats, I take it you consider the GAO essentially as an arm of the Congress? Mr. STAATS. Yes, indeed, we are an arm of the Congress, but we function as an arm of the Congress in two broad ways. One is responding to requests for assistance that we get from the Congress which represents roughly 25 percent of our total workload of our professional staff today. The second is the broad oversight responsibility that we have as a charge from the Congress in our basic statute to carry out work on our own initiative, in areas which we think are relevant to the interest of the Congress or where potential problems may be identified in the executive branch. We function both ways. But irrespective of which way we do function, the product is a visible product so far as the Congress is concerned. The reports that we submit to the Congress are made public the day following their transmittal. In the case of a report made to a committee of Congress, the committee elects to make that public or not, as it sees fit. But any report we make to the Congress is a public report and, therefore, visible to every committee of Congress and not just to single subcommittees. Yes, we are an arm of the Congress. You are quite correct. Mr. SARBANES. I take it, then, without using the word "adversary." that the nature of your relationship with the executive branch of the Government clearly has to be one of independence. I would take it to the extent that we function on the principle of separation of powers that you are alined with the legislative branch and not the executive branch. Would that be correct? Mr. STAATS. That is correct. Mr. SARBANES. Is it, therefore, illogical and somewhat anomalous for the head of the GAO to be appointed by the President rather than being appointed from the legislative branch of the Government in some other way? Mr. STAATS. No, sir, I do not think so, and I will tell you why. Let me go back a bit into the history of the legislation itself. The issue between the Congress and the President-it was President Wilson at that time was whether the General Accounting Office should be part of the executive branch or the legislative branch. The statute which created the office was the Budget and Accounting Act, which also created the Bureau of the Budget to serve the President. The argument was that the General Accounting Office should serve the Congress. But the functions which were vested in the General Accounting Office, many of them, in the President's opinion, at least, partook of an executive nature. |