Congressional Democrats claim top Republicans are trying to rush through the selection process for the next head of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) — a watchdog agency housed within the legislative branch — in order to let President Donald Trump place one of his allies into the position before Democrats take back control of Congress in January.

A group of top Democrats who are tasked with recommending candidates to be the next head of GAO — Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Ranking Member Gary Peters (D-MI) and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Ranking Member Robert Garcia (D-CA) — put out a statement Wednesday afternoon, saying Republicans gave them “less than 24 hours” to turn in their submissions of candidates.

“This is clearly a sham to enable President Trump to appoint a handpicked nominee to lead Congress’ watchdog,” Democrats said in the joint statement. “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.”

GAO — the nonpartisan federal agency that examines how federal taxpayer dollars are spent — was led by Comptroller General Gene Dodaro until last year. Dodaro, who headed the agency for 15 years, retired at the end of 2025. The agency is currently headed by Acting Comptroller General Orice Williams Brown, waiting for Trump to nominate its next permanent leader.  

Now, Democrats claim Trump, in yet another lame duck session attempt to secure power, is trying to expedite the placement of one of his allies to lead the agency that has been a thorn in his administration’s side. Since Trump took office in January, GAO has issued several decisions finding impoundment violations by the Trump administration. Whoever gets appointed to be the next comptroller general will inherit the ongoing probes into the same executive branch overreach issues.

While the agency concluded repeatedly that the Trump administration violated the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, they have not taken action to sue the Trump administration for the violations it has identified — despite some bipartisan support from congressional lawmakers. A Trump loyalist leading the charge in GAO will effectively guarantee an impoundment violation lawsuit would likely never come.

Experts have been worried for some time that Trump would replace Dodaro with a loyalist that will lead the agency for the next 15 years.

“It is very likely that Gene Dodaro is replaced with a Trump lackey,” Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, told TPM right before Dodaro retired.

Kogan said that if Dodaro is replaced by a Trump loyalist, he fears the agency will stop doing the “important part of what they have been doing, which is investigations, public oversight and accountability.”

The Washington Sun reported in October that the administration has floated the idea of nominating Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Deputy Director Eric Ueland to head GAO. He is a key ally of President Trump’s who worked closely with OMB Director Russ Vought — the primary orchestrator of the Trump administration’s efforts to impound funds authorized by Congress.

Following Dodaro’s retirement, a bipartisan panel of lawmakers — made up of the House Speaker, Senate Majority Leader, Senate and House Minority Leaders, the president pro tempore, Chair and Ranking Member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee as well as the Chair and Ranking Member of the House Oversight Committee — were supposed to come together and recommend a replacement to the president. President Donald Trump would then nominate a candidate subject to Senate confirmation.

But almost a year later, the Democrats on the panel say “Republican leaders have never convened the Commission for meetings, and the Commission has not interviewed a single candidate for this critical role, despite repeated requests to begin the process over the last two years.”

The lack of urgency and bipartisanship, top Democrats added, runs “counter to the last time a GAO Comptroller was selected in 2010 in a yearlong, bipartisan process.”

“Every Member of Congress who values independent oversight and good stewardship of taxpayer dollars should call this out for what it is – 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,” Democrats said.