U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE FISCAL YEAR REQUEST GAO is requesting $379,497,000 for fiscal year 1988, an increase of $67,119,000 over its fiscal year 1987 requirements. Forty-seven percent of this increase is required to meet mandatory and inflationary cost changes in personnel pay and benefits and related costs for existing levels of service. GAO is requesting $5.7 million for a 100 average position increase in its staffing level. GAO is also requesting that its appropriation language be amended to authorize the Comptroller General to accept donations toward the cost of sponsoring the Triennial Congress of Supreme Audit Institutions in Washington, D.C. in 1992. These donations will be deposited to a special trust fund, which will be directed by the Comptroller General as to how it is used for the costs of the Triennial Congress. ROLE OF ORGANIZATION The Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 established the General Accounting Office (GAO), with the Comptroller General as its head, to provide the Congress with an objective assurance that public funds are spent properly. Under the 1921 Act, GAO was given the authority to investigate and report on the use of public funds by the executive departments. In addition, GAO was provided a number of administrative powers previously held by the Comptroller of the Treasury. These include the power to settle all accounts of the government, to supervise the collection of debts owed to the government, and to render binding decisions on questions of payment submitted by disbursing officers and department heads. The 1921 Act also gave the Comptroller General the responsibility of prescribing accounting principles and standards for the federal government. The drafters of the 1921 Act conferred these powers on GAO because of their desire to ensure that such functions would be carried out by an officer of the government whose Impartiality both the Congress and the President could rely upon. For 65 years, GAO has filled that role as the objective overseer of the expenditure of public funds. The success of the original scheme is reflected in the reliance that both Congress and the agencies place on the thousands of legal decisions, financial audits, and program evaluations conducted by GAO each year. It is also reflected in the expansion of GAO's functions over the years. The Comptroller General has been assigned a variety of new functions by the Congress since 1921, including the responsibility of bringing suits to require the release of impounded budget authority, membership on the Chrysler Corporation Loan Guarantee Board and the U.S. Railway Association Board of Directors, and the power to consider bid protests under the Competition in Contracting Act. To carry out these responsibilities, GAO has staff stationed at a headquarters office near Capitol Hill, at numerous audit sites in the Washington metropolitan area, and at regional offices throughout the continental United States. Overseas activities are staffed primarily from offices in Honolulu and in Frankfurt, West Germany and from an audit site in Panama City, Panama. |