E-mail PRESS RELEASE – Project on Government Oversight – Danielle Briant, editor

Would you cut funding from an agency that produces the equivalent of an 8,700% return on investment for U.S. taxpayers?

I doubt it. But now that the congressional “Super Committee” has failed to come up with a plan for trimming the deficit, the budget for an agency that saves billions of taxpayer dollars is on the chopping block.

Tell your Members of Congress to oppose cuts to the Government Accountability Office.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, produces work that’s vital to the public. It helps Congress avoid starting or continuing wasteful programs and helps make the government more efficient and cost-effective. According to the agency’s own estimates, taxpayers saw a financial benefit equivalent to $87 for every dollar spent on the GAO last year.

In times of fiscal constraint, taxpayers should be thinking about investing in more oversight, not less. Gutting the GAO would only serve to make matters worse, and render Congress incapable of seeing, hearing, or speaking of government waste and inefficiency.

Cutting GAO’s budget is a mistake—tell your Rep. and Senators to take a stand for congressional oversight.

The Super Committee’s failure means that across-the-board cuts to government spending will begin in January 2013. It’s likely that lawmakers will put together an alternative proposal to reduce the deficit before these cuts kick in, but either way, Congress should take a thoughtful, surgical approach, trimming spending with an eye for waste.

The GAO’s budget was already threatened once earlier this year, when some lawmakers proposed reducing its budget by nearly $50 million. Efforts to carry forward or echo that proposal would harm Congress’s ability to conduct oversight and identify real potential savings.

Please tell your Member of Congress to take a stand for congressional oversight. Contact your Representative and urge him or her to oppose cuts to GAO’s budget.