Lame-duck Congress expedites search for next GAO leader

A lame-duck Congress is suddenly hastening the process to find a new long-term leader of a governmentwide watchdog agency that has drawn the ire of the Trump administration. 

House and Senate Republicans faced calls over the past two years to start the bipartisan process of interviewing candidates to lead the Government Accountability Office. 

Under the current process, the selection of the GAO comptroller general begins with a commission of 10 senior House and Senate lawmakers from both parties that recommends individuals for the position to the president. 

Whoever the president selects is subject to Senate confirmation for one nonrenewable 15-year term. The last time lawmakers vetted candidates for GAO’s top job in 2010, the congressional commission spent more than a year on its search. 

This time around, members of the commission are being given a single day to come up with candidate recommendations, after receiving notice on Veterans Day. The commission is meant to recommend at least three candidates for the job. 

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., requested commission members on Wednesday to submit candidates to serve as GAO’s next comptroller general within a 24-hour deadline, according to top congressional Democrats who criticized the expedited timeline as a “sham" process.  

Paul is responsible for convening the commission. Congressional Democrats said the commission “has not interviewed a single candidate for this critical role, despite repeated requests to begin the process over the last two years.” 

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.,  Senate Homeland Security Governmental Affairs Committee Ranking Member Gary Peters, D-Mich., and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Ranking Member Robert Garcia, D-Calif., called the fast-tracked nomination process a “transparent effort to ram through another Trump crony at the 11th hour, and undercut Congress’ ability to conduct effective oversight of the Trump Administration.” 

“This is clearly a sham to enable President Trump to appoint a handpicked nominee to lead Congress’ watchdog. We cannot allow President Trump to install a fox in the henhouse at an agency Congress relies on to provide independent, nonpartisan oversight, and expose waste, fraud, and abuse across the Trump Administration,” they said. 

The committee is currently slated to have a currently unnamed “nominee to be Comptroller General” slated to appear at a confirmation hearing next Thursday, along with nine other nominees.  

“This is a 15-year nomination,” a HSGAC aide told Government Executive. “Really,  they're just rushing through this entire process.” 

The Washington Sun reported last month that the Trump administration is floating the idea of having Office of Management and Budget Deputy Director Eric Ueland serve as the next GAO comptroller general. The HSGAC aide said the committee is aware that Ueland’s name has been floated for the job. 

Ueland said Monday at an industry conference that the Trump administration’s reshaping of the federal government has been “long overdue.” 

“We have a high degree of confidence that the sorts of changes and improvements that we are making throughout the federal government – how it works, how it's able to cooperate and interact with itself, and ultimately how it delivers key services to the public – aren't partisan. They just make sense. And so we'll be able to both persevere and then compound that over time,” Ueland said at a conference hosted by the National Academy of Public Administration. 

The Senate in May 2025 voted 52-45 along party lines to confirm Ueland as OMB's second-in-command. A potential vote to confirm him as GAO comptroller could come down to a few outgoing Republican senators who have challenged some of the Trump administration's decisionmaking. 

The comptroller general position opened up in December 2025 when Gene Dodaro retired. Orice Williams Brown, the agency’s chief operating officer, is currently leading GAO in an acting capacity. 

The Trump administration has criticized GAO, particularly over instances when the agency found that officials violated rules around impoundments, which is when the executive branch delays or withholds congressionally approved spending. Lawmakers also have accused agencies of not cooperating with and being slow to respond to GAO audits under the current president. 

Sarah Kaczmarek, managing director of GAO’s Office of Public Affairs, said in a statement that "GAO has been preparing for a leadership transition and remains focused on its mission of providing Congress with independent, fact-based, and nonpartisan information to support its oversight and decision-making." 

Daniel Schuman, executive director of the American Governance Institute, said that after failing to convene the statutorily-required commission for almost a year, “HSGAC Chairman Rand Paul should work to protect Congress's independent watchdog, not engage in an end run that undermines its credibility.”

“The position of Comptroller General is too important to rush through a lame-duck session of Congress, especially when doing so requires bypassing the law's requirement that a bipartisan congressional commission recommend well-vetted candidates,” Schuman said. 

The bipartisan Commission is made up of the speaker of the House, the president pro tempore of the Senate, the majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate, HSGAC's chairman and ranking member, and the chairman and ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.